No, this is not faked.

The worst type situation is the one where, no matter what choice you make, you're going to end up being a bastard one way or the other...

Well, my story "Prison Diary" was rejected by the editor (well, actually the co-editor and not the editor himself) of the publication I submitted it to. Since it's my first submission I can't say I'm too pleased, though realistically I kind of suspected it would.

The letter said (more or less, I'm typing from memory) "I think I'll pass on this. The story did not grab me at all. Best of luck placing it elsewhere."

Ouch (I doubt he meant anything malicious with the last sentence, but it certainly is blunt).

That said, I could not help but have some misgiving about the rewrite I sent in. I chopped and edited so much that I wonder if the telling did not, maybe, get damaged in some way. I suppose my best next step (other than writing something else) would be to re-evaluate the rewrite. Or just write something else.

....than winter-temperatures in the summer.

It's the talk of the South African town! It's stupendous! It's unbelievable! It's a musical event so disastrously off-key you'd expect to only find it in outrageous satire! Last Friday South Africa played off against France in a rugby game we lost; and who can blame our team? At the beginning of the match the guy who sang (I have no idea who he is or where he's from, and neither does anyone else!) both of the South African national anthems (yes, we have two) seems to have put in little or no practice at any point of his musical career, which could only be troubled or brief.

Familiarity with neither anthem is required. To be honest... I'm not sure if I'm supposed to laugh or cry.


Hey, that's two Doctor Strangelove parody titles in two weeks.

The Criterion Collection, for those of you who don't know, is a series of NTSC DVD releases that could reasonably be considered some of the best DVD Editions out there. From their (sometimes) highly artistic custom made cover designs to their menus they are treasured by DVD collectors. The covers, in particular, are sometimes very good and would even sometimes make sense only to those who have watched and loved the films a million times. Here are some of my favourite covers.



Not that this post is about existing covers, really. It's about fake covers. It seems that at an on-line forum, for a year or so, a group of people had been creating fake Criterion Covers for movies that are either in the "collection", or should be (or some are just parodies). If you have an interest in movies and graphic design than this link is for you. I can spend hours on these pages (and they're over a hundred!) without getting bored. But I'm going to bed soon.

But first, my choice of the best fake covers under the LJ Cut. The New Hope one is obviously a parody. ;-)

( Bored but talented people )

The Link. Please note, some of the covers are decidedly, erm, R-Rated, so it's adults only. Off course, the better you know your movies the more you'll enjoy this. Also, remember, this is graphic intensive as well.

...or is LiveJournal really quiet these days

(not counting Bradley's and rii's journals)

Ah, the trailers are appearing for Clint Eastwood's next directorial effort, INVICTUS, the story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup told through the eyes of Nelson Mandela. Magic times, says I. I hope it's as good as it looks.

As some of you know I partake in the ancient and otherwise misunderstood ritual of Pub Quizzing, where we go to a local bar, get drunk and see if we can answer a bunch of ludicrous questions whilst being totally intoxicated. We do so on a regular basis, but occasionally we decide to remain sober and go to the regional finals where there's a lot of good money and a pile of cash to win. Today, in Boksburg, a suburb of Johannesburg, was the finals, and our team, Knersus en die Haasbredies, went to compete against 19 other top teams of the region.

We did not expect to win. We went just to show our faces; call it honour, or luxury (taketh thy pique). An hour into the game we actually did not REALISTICALLY think we still had a chance. We got some of our lowest scores EVER on certain categories. We just fought to finish in the top five (like we did earlier in the year).

Then, essentially, the same bad luck that dogged us at the beginning decided to dog the other teams, putting us all on, more or less, equal ground. In the final two categories we managed to do VERY WELL in but got the same points as another team, meaning we had to play off against it for the top prize. We could barely believe it. After our rotten start we did not believe, actually, that we could end up on top!! The pressure was mounting and we all began to feel very stressed because second prize was just a crate of Savanna (they sponsored the event - duh). 

We had to answer five questions. We knew four of the answers; they didn't. We won.

I usually play for fun, but I needed the money, actually, and can only thank God (literally, not as an expression) that we won. We got R12000 which is about R1500 dollars US, and we're splitting it 7 ways. Just in time for Christmas, too! 

Here's the pictures taken afterwards.
( It's dry, but you can drink it )

...I would like to apologize to the international community for this local beer commercial.

Yes, it is him.

Forgive us.

Johnnicles is back from the Eastern Transvaal. Hopefully I did not contract malaria.

Well, as some of you may know, I'm leaving for a week in the Eastern Transvaal. It's in the malaria zone, but I've been there before without contracting any tropical diseases. I will only be back by Sunday.

And today I touched an elephant, a giraffe and a lion, and got the photos to prove it; all this after stumbling by accident onto the set of the British TV series Wild at Heart. Life can be pretty awesome sometimes at random intervals. I'll post the pics eventually.

I'm currently on holiday, which will be a two-week thing, and my sister came to visit us for these two weeks along with some friends of hers; this is actually the third time this has happened, so we're used to it. :-) Currently the friends are in Cape Town while she remains here in Pretoria, but later we'll be heading to the Eastern Transvaal area; we'll be going into malaria country, so I'm definitely going to have to take malaria medication. But this post is not about this.

Rather, it's about everything she brought with her; gifts for many from the United Kingdom. Firstly, she brought me the June edition of the Brit movie mag Empire, which was not only the edition guest-edited by Steven Spielberg but which was also the 20th Anniversary Issue. Because this is Spielberg he managed to get several top-directors to participate in articles (big and small), from Clint Eastwood (who gives two detailed articles on Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, two directors who influenced him the most as directors) to Hayao Miyazaki to Darren Aronofsky. Unlike "entertainment magazines" that just spout random news on "entertainment", large-budget movies and gossip British movie magazines (which include Total Movie, Hot Dog and others) actually offer substantial journalism and cares nothing for whose seen with who in Barbados or what the big blockbuster is (well, kinda sorta). Often cynical and sarcastic the care only to inform you not only which movies are good but they spend a substantial amount of time on classic movies, foreign movies and such. And Empire is one of the best.

With this she brougth me a small book which is a fascimile of a 1964 Home Office pamphlet called: Civil Defence Handbook No. 10: Advising the Householder on protection against Nuclear Attack, which could have come with your copy of Fallout 3. More pragmatic than the US' "duck and cover" program it gives fully detailed drawings of what to do when a nuclear attack comes. Despite it's pragmatism it does seem to imply that you have a month to prepare before the A-bombs start falling considering how complicated the procedures are to protect yourself. Although straight-forward and unironic it is actually unintentionally funny at times.

The real meat of her gifts, however, were the three DVD sets she brought, which equal about 8 discs in total and 1126 minutes of viewing time (18 hours and 46 minutes). Firstly there's the second series of the BBC Time Travel / Cop Drama Life on Mars, somewhat unsuccessfully remade this year as a US TV series, and then there's the 1979 adaptation of Le Carré Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and it's sequel Smiley's People, which was the subject of a debatably memorable dream a few weeks ago. But never mind. So far, from what I've seen, TTSS is a pretty good adaptation for a novel I would have filed under "unfilmable". Spymaster George Smiley is played, incredibly well, by Sir Alec Guiness, best known as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original you know what movies (actually, both are from the same period of his impressive and under-appreciated career). As Le Carré's seemingly inert "anti-Bond" he's perfect as the brilliant but somewhat bland and secretive hero who can concoct master plans and penetrate impenetrable conspiracies but is emotionally incapable of dealing with his wife's disgressions. The series also has a young (but still amazingly bald) Patrick Stewart in an important supporting role where, despite the fact that he was one of the 1970's top Shakespearan actors, he doesn't utter a single word.

I'm not sure, though, how people who did not read the novel would experience the mini-series since, even in a condensed, simplified form, it is actually still pretty labyrinthine and dense, and equally slow-paced. Reasonably some might consider it a bore, but still Guiness' acting carries the series.




I also have a new avatar; I sort of got tired of the Al Hirschfield Buster Keaton.

After two years and two months, after 355 000 words and 672 pages and countless hours and many prayers, I've finished it. My writing project.

My massively overwritten novel.

Hahahahahahahhahaahahahahahhahaah hoohohohohohohohohohoo heheheheheheheh hahahahaha

Today I submitted a short story for publication; this is the first time I've ever done that. Because it's less than a month before the deadline I doubt that it would make the cut since the publisher does seem to be popular and the anthology is probably already filled. I should have submitted it earlier, but I've spent months rewriting / editing the story down to 5 000 words, so if I'm late it's my fault entirely. Basically it's a shot in the dark, but there is actually still the chance I'd get published. The story was written in 2007, actually, and some of you may remember it. It was called Prison Diary: A Nightmare about a guy trapped for decades in an unending golf-course.

The anthology it was being submitted for called for "Christian Horror or Dark Fantasy", and my story fell into that category, vaguely. The version I submitted, though, was heavily rewritten; the tone and the ending remains the same but I removed a great deal of the direct HP Lovecraft / Cthulhu references while keeping some of the elements of the story, making the antagonist in the story more ambiguous. I did sacrifice, subsequently, a few eerie scenes, but I can live with that.

So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping it does get published. If it doesn't, at least I'll have something for a similar market, niche as it is.

The Unsinkable Sedrorovin Murghurobag is, for some esoteric reason, maybe my favourite The Simpsons joke of all time, possibly because I see no chain of logic as to how it came into existence at all.

Ba-haa!

I'm generally a lucky person. Monday I picked up a R100 note in the street, and it was not fake or anything, and that's my second one in a year's time. When it comes to life, I'm fairly lucky. When it comes to gaming, however, my life is an endless stream of misfortune equal to any curse conjured up by Romany nomads and Sangomas bent on my destruction. That's not so much an oppinion as an observation.

Here follows a long and tragic log of my endless problems with trying to play some Fallout 3 DLC, with which I'm now saddled but unable to play.

( The Other Blog of Phineas Fogg )

Earlier this morning, during rush hour, the US Embassy in the Capital was evacuated for reasons neither the S.A. Government or the Embassy would expand upon. Thirty guesses who it might be.

U.S. Embassy Evacuated.

Last night has got to be the weirdest sleepless night I've had in a long time. I've had sleepless nights before; some connected with sickness (like this one) while others just happened for no discernable reason. Last night's was different in the sense that it was impossible for me to sleep longer than 45 minutes at a time, though the average time of sleeping was about 15 - 20 minutes, I reckon. That's not the weird-part; the weird part were the dreams.

Essentially I had variations of the same dream over and over again, almost like the movie Groundhog Day, only less fun and frustrating because, the second I closed my eyes, the whole thing would start again from a different angle. Each variation of the dream was connected to the last five or six chapters of John Le Carré's Smiley's People, and usually I experienced each variation of the story from the worm's-eye view of a low-level intelligence worker, on both the British side and the KGB,which was weird and not a whole lot of fun. I tried many times to think of something else when I went to sleep but everytime it tracked back to this variations on a theme of Le Carré.

I just don't hope that tonight will be the same because I'd go insane then.

Today I'm sick. I've felt this disease grow in my chest, in my lungs, and slowly move to my throat. Now I sound like a depressed Senor Cardgage. I suppose I got laryngitis. We'll have to see what the doctor says tomorrow  If it is laryngitis then it would be a first. But no probalo, Nesqueetia de la Hoya, this post is not about me feeling like I got a fire in my throat and lungs. It's 'bout books!

Basically, it is just meant to link you to this interesting blog entry / essay film critic Roger Ebert wrote about how much books he's read. If you like to read, then read it and weep, knowing full well you may never read this much unless you're Umberto Eco. Take that thought to bed and let it make you toss and turn, mwahahahahhahahahaa!

- Johnnie
Spreading intellectual Misery one blog entry at a time.