WillWybrow.com

I am reading the .pdf of Derren Brown’s Tricks of the Mind - incredibly interesting and, as Dawkins loves to put it, consciousness raising, even if it’s in the smallest of ways.

He discusses many things, but while I was reading, I picked up particularly on the part where he mentions the techniques of a successful teacher in creating a good point out of a bad one from a student without necessarily telling the student that he or she is an idiot and fucked up. The general gist was to use language that made it seem as though the right answer followed on from the student’s submission, in the following style:

Teacher: [Ask for contributions]
Student: [Bad point]
Teacher: Yes, I see what you mean about [bad point] and also [correct point].

Ok, I see the advantages to this, the student feels like he or she has made a valid contribution and the teacher is also not interrupted in her flow. But as I was reading this, I remembered something.

My goddamn GCSE English teacher used to do this to me!!

I just thought at the time that I hadn’t made myself clear, and that her different point was something she’d picked up from my minced words, but my GCSE English teacher (Miss Louise Roe, married a Mr. Spiers in my final year of GCSEs) was doing it on purpose! It must be a fucking technique they learn at teacher school. All those INSET days are finally explained and it burns me to remember them.

It must have been an absolute barrel of laughs for my desk-neighbour, a lovely girl named Natalie (my first crush (don’t say anything, please)) who sat next to me and offered infinite patience with my rigid, timid and altogether useless mind. (Leave your vote as a comment as to whether or not I ought to tag her in the Facebook-note import.)

Recovering from bittersweet memories of being a friendless loser in school and back on track: my damned English teacher must have been doing this on purpose. What pisses me off is that I eventually gained a little bit of confidence in my English lessons despite the Common Sense portion of my brain protesting as loudly as it could. It’s a shame I dismissed Common Sense as plain old cowardice back then (it wasn’t), because I must have made a massive fool of myself. Argh, I’m so angry at her. Here’s another thing I hated about her - she made me go first (out of everyone in the class) when delivering my spoken piece of coursework (a fucking rant about how smokers are fucking jerkwad sons of bitch whores), a day before I’d consider myself “ready.” I had this picture of blackened tarred-up lungs that I was gonna print onto an overhead projector transparency to show everyone what it’s like when you continually blowjob little tobacco penises. But, I didn’t have time, she made me go first (shitfuck I was shaking like a fat chick’s vibrator). One of her good points was that I had pretty awesome cue-cards (they were so awesome, just short bullet points to prompt me on what was a really well-rehearsed rant, you could say the birth of the Wybrow rant), but we weren’t graded on our damn cue-cards. She said I’d have gone up a grade if I’d used a visual aid. Oh, you mean if you’d given me one more day like you gave everyone else? Arrrghhh!!! I was shitty enough at that subject without being raped into premature ejacu-rant-tion.

Did I take anything worthwhile from that English teacher? I’m going to go all out here and say ‘no’; though we were one of the only classes to study Lord of the Flies for one of our exams, a truly remarkable book (I am going to see a performance with Fran soon). But she herself didn’t give me anything useful. Just some shitty years next to a pretty girl and a hatred for poetry.

Some of my friends keep their own blog. I know I love mine more than anything else in the world. It’s a memory, a possession, a creative outlet, a home and a refuge, all in one place. There’s courage to be found in the rigid face of the upstanding green-flecked columns, wisdom to be sought from the words therein and solace to be found within the back-end and the archives that can’t be rivalled.

I don’t know if any of my friends feel like that about their blogs (I suspect they do not), but I know that everyone likes to know that they are being read.

I don’t use newsfeed software. I never really got into that whole system. But that’s not to say I don’t appreciate it when it’s convenient. That’s why, thanks to my iGoogle page, I have been able to add a “Blogs” tab, where I’ve put boxes from all the blogs that I read regularly, check occasionally (because they don’t get updated very often) and used to check (because they no longer are updated, but I have to be there in case someone starts up again). I’ve managed to put them in approximate order of activity, trying to take into account recency and volume of activity, using “Wybrow’s Algorithm” (I just guessed, and it “feels about right”), and I am definitely going to keep on top of it (unlike what I tried to get going with my feed list page on this website) with new additions from friends, reading everything as it’s published. I check my iGoogle page nearly every day (since there are some tech-oriented newsfeeds on there where I can read about Steve fucking Ballmer whenever I feel like it), so I will always be informed.

I would like to share it with everyone, though… to let others know the other folk who live online nearby. Maybe I will make a “planet” feed aggregator on a new site. Planet Will - incorporating both my and my friends’ posts. Maybe.

Until then; get fucking updating, everyone!

Decent animation is one of those things we take for granted these days, so when a film comes along and expects to survive looking like one of those awful ancient TV shows from a time before computers, it’s kind of like a visual kick in the nuts.

If you ever watched the animated Lord of the Rings movie, you’d be as well to start from that sort of quality when you’re picturing this. From there, however, you need to consider what it would be like if it were even worse. It was nearly offset, as well, by some pretty 3D CGI dragons. But I have a strong suspicion that funds were diverted from animation and into casting. Kiefer Sutherland had no place in this film; he should go back to doing big budget Hollywood flicks like Phonebooth and, uh, oh yeah - 24, 24: the Game, 24: the DVD Boardgame and the announced 24 movie.

But I can hope, can’t I? The Lord of the Rings animated flick in 1978 was eventually made into a live-action film in 2001; I’ll only have to wait 23 years! Mind you, by then, Christian Bale will be too old to pull off a convincing Raistlin Majere. Although, with his white hair and thin look, maybe that’s a good thing?

The film, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, to give it its full title, is an adaptation of the first book of the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy. Story-wise, it’s pretty faithful to the book, right down to some of the dialogue. There are a few things that have been changed; firstly, the Green Gemstone Man is gone. There is no hint of the three-way triangle of distrust between the elf Gilthanas, the man Eben (who was missing completely) and the mage Raistlin, nor was there the revelation of the eventual betrayer. That could have made some delicious cinematic tension and mystery. We also didn’t see anything of the Chain Room or the tumbling blocks across the gates of Pax Tharkas. Fizban was also done pretty badly; he wasn’t bumbling enough and his secret was revealed at the end (when it should have been revealed in two sequels’ time).

This should have been a live acton thing, and it should have been done well. I can’t believe that Lord of the Rings got so much money poured into it, and this was done on the cheap. I much prefer this story; the characters are much deeper, the world and environment is cooler and there’s way more magic. I will write the screenplay if they want. And do the casting. I will get someone who isn’t Peter Jackson to direct. Does anyone want to make a big old bunch of cash? All I need is a few million pounds to invest in making this film.

Ok, right, back to reviewing the film. Uh, it’s not great. In fact, I wouldn’t bother with it at all. As a standalone film, it’s not worth trying to get into, because it will be more effort than a film should be. For those of you who have read the book and don’t mind being enraged at the patheticness of this attempt to turn it into a film, check it out. But don’t get your hopes up.

At least the filmmakers had the shame and decency to keep it out of cinemas.

Holy crap, they made one. Animated. Jack Bauer is Raistlin Majere.

That’s all I can comment on just now. Review to follow when I’ve watched the bastard. I’ve heard bad things.

But come on, the screenplay was written by the writer of Xena: Warrior Princess! And it has Raistlin!

And I just checked, Lucy Lawless plays Goldmoon. Woah, that’s definitely wrong, though I love Lucy Lawless.

Anyways, yeah, more later. Much love.

What the fuck is this?