Larvatus Prodeo: A four-cannon salute

Sad news as the good ship Larvatus Prodeo hoists anchor and departs the waters immediately to our south.

Fort Solor duly issues four-gun salute. Sargento da Costa... Dispara!

In addition, Tenente Amilcar has already boarded our caravel A Infanta Beatriz, to harrass any Holandes who may impede her path. (If you spot him, FFS tell him not to lose our ONLY breech-loading swivel gun, like last time I sent him to New Holland).

Anyways, since its probably not the time to start linking to fave posts over there, allow me to highlight this oldie but goodie  from the heady days of 2005. Larfs! (Especially from about post #50 on as the booze kicked, in two states).

Well done all those who wrote the posts over at LP. I only ever wrote one from memory - mostly sat around capping off in the comments. I wouldn't like you to think I wasn't grateful!

And so, I charge a parting glass of Douro Red: Saude!

Why we're screwed, and how to (maybe) save our butts.

We're probably screwed, and way sooner than we think. But this is a fascinating historical overview of why, and how the 'distrbuted' (decentralised) ICT revolution may prefigure a distributed energy revolution, which could just save our butts.

 

What's your 'go-to' webpage when bored?

I need new toys on the internets! No blue stuff or nuthin', mind - but I've just realised I go to the same webpages 95% of the time. I am curious (Beige) as to what I'm missing out on.

What's fun 'n different? And is it as good as Strange Maps?

A Bumper Crop of DVD Rankings!

As Peter Sellers put it in "Being There", I like to watch. This comes straight off my phone, where I record the videos I've watched. Quite a few months worth here. I rank them 1-10, 10 being the highest.

The only editing I've done to the list is take it out of chronological order, and group them by score. From D'or to D'oh, as it were. Occasionally I note the Director's name.

Your thoughts? Disagreements? Endorsements?

10: Ivan the Terrible II; The Silent Partner; LA confidential; Manhattan murder mystery; 12 Angry Men; Blood Oath.

9: Accident (Pinter); Satan's Brew; Gainsbourg; Road to Perdition; Lola; Centurion; Intimate enemies; Le Regle de Jeu (Renoir); L'enfer; A Summer's Tale (Rohmer); Valerie and her week of wonders; Das Boot; 2:36; Full moon in Paris; Mother Joan of the Angels (Jerzy Kawalerowicz); Repo Man; That cold day in the park; The player; La Ardilla Roja; Match Point; The outlaw Josey Wales; The Club; Whatever works; Moon.

8: Ivan the Terrible I; Passenger (Andrezj Munk); A winters tale (Rohmer); The Dead (John Huston); Distant voices, still lives; Army of crime; Katzelmacher (Fassbinder); Chinese roulette (Fassbinder); The Perfectionist; Sweet smell of success; Between Wars; The Last Detail; Dog Soldiers; Pauline a la plage; Leap year; The Marquise of O; 3 Women; I am love; Melinda and Melinda; Rendezvous in Paris; Winter in wartime; Gosford Park; Julia's Eyes; Ryan's Daughter; Cassandra's Dream; The Maltese Falcon

7: A blonde in love (Milosz Forman); The third part of the night (Andrzej Zulawski); Audition/talent show (Milosz Forman); The Cars that ate Paris; Diamonds of the night (Jan Nemec); Veronika Voss; The Searchers (Ford);Duet for Four; Squizzy Taylor; Wittgenstein; Brilliant Lies; An Autumn Tale (Rohmer); Peaches; My girlfriends boyfriend (Rohmer; The Green Ray; Husbands and wives; Bigger than life; Nos querido mes de agosto; The long goodbye; Billy Liar

6: Love me no more; Red white and blue; Safe; The night the prowler; Cracks

Trilogy: the weeping meadow; Everyone says I love you; Fallen Angels

4: Black Dahlia

3: The man from London; Chaotic Ana; What's up tiger lily

2: Suspiria; Four minutes

0: The piano tuner of earthquakes

Please invade us and terminate this 300 years of stupidity

Bonus! Our Head of State can now be a woman, even if there’s another option. Plus s/he can marry a Catholic (though naturally, she can’t actually be one, like say, me: a secular atheist who was baptised a Mick – and all my relatives).

Obviously, I've always wanted to be part of nation that wouldn't have people like me as top dog.

Thanks Commonwealth, for updating the irrelevance of the peevish and shitty Restoration prejudices we call our Constitution.

My apologies...

In this post, I'd like to formally apologise for reaching 43 summers before reading Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim.

Christopher Hitchens is right, it is the finest comic novel of the 2nd half of the the 20th century; but not as right as some bloke called Toby Young, who chucks in the first half as well.

As I wipe away remaining hysterical tears from the 'Merrie England' public lecture scene, I furthermore issue a general statement of regret to several friends and colleagues, on whom I have urged David Lodge, or Malcolm Bradbury, as the finest exemplars of the campus novel; without mentioning the Master. Was any ill-informed lit critic ever so blind!

Finally, oh fickle Lords of memory, please let the requisite time of forgetting pass quickly, so I can read it again.

Recent Happysnap

News from our fort at Solor

Some will laugh at us, Amilcar, in a future yet to be imagined.
As you say, O meu Capitão.
The Holandes, they will pass.
Sons of Spanish pimps and Flemish whores, O meu Capitão
But our fort at Solor will endure.
This I believe also, O meu Capitão.
Because in their hearts, all men are Portuguese. And they were all lost, seeking the Indies.
May they see our forts, O meu Capitão...
...and know themselves, Amilcar. This is why our impossible empire
will whisper... forever.

Remembering...

Both my grandads were WW2 veterans - one a left wing coal miner, the other a conservative middle class teacher. Neither wanted a bar of the RSL, ANZAC day - or anything else to do with that time of their lives. 

Ever. 

Let us not forget that many Australians unease with the martial routines of ANZAC day is also informed by war veterans, a direct legacy from those who returned; and that Australians voted twice to defeat conscription.

Vidlog

Fort Solor Vidlog! See below the list I keep on my iPhone whenever I watch a video. Which is quite often, I confess. Ive been getting into Eric Rohmer, Louis Bresson's finest pupil Louis Malle, some sci-fi, some horror, Spanish language film, and of course, as always, 1970s Australian film.

Ive bolded the ones I thought were really top shelf, and tried to be picky at it too. Some of them Id seen before, but love - these will be obvious. I've also used strikethrough for the genuine stinkers.

If you loved or loathed any of these, or have related recommendations, leave a note in the fort gate suggestions box below.

The man from hong kong/ Scanners/ Loneliness of the long distance runner/Nosferatu/Napoleon dynamite/The removalists/ Milou en may /Escalator to the scaffold /Boys don't cry/Jacobs ladder/Punishment park/ Hard candy/ Five minutes of heaven/ Reds/Cannibal holocaust/Breaking the waves/Event horizon/La Bete/Irreversible/Anatomy l'enfer/Old Joy/Into the wild/My dinner with Andre/Letters from iwo jima/Last stop 174/Travelling North/Battle Royale/Logan's run/Wigan Casino/Kids/Gozu/The silent house/I spit on your grave/Suture/Last year in Marienbad/Soylent Green/River's Edge/Repulsion /The Field/Patton/ 2001: A Space Oddyssey/Scanner Darkly/Unforgiven/La Notte/Dons Party/Peeping Tom/Alatriste/Scott Pilgrim/Red Desert/Battleship Potemkin/Knife on the water/Amacord/Triple Agent/Chloe in the afternoon/ 8.5/Ciao manhattan /Bananas/The good marriage/The aviators wife/Blood diamond/Madam Bovary/The Night Porter/Tale of springtime /Guess who's coming to dinner?/Money movers/The Plumber