PETA Round 3: Beating a Dead Picachu

I hate PETA. Let’s beat this dead horse a little more, shall we? See how many more crappy and bloodstained jokes I can get out of the long-dead corpse of the filly?

That is, in retrospect, an appallingly inappropriate metaphor.

(A quick summary for new readers/people who can’t use the archive – I hate PETA. They’re self-righteous, ego-centric, do-nothing, “GO VEGAN OR ALL THE PUPPIES WILL DIE AND YOU WILL DIE A PAINFUL DEATH AND SATAN WILL SPEND ETERNITY COVERING HIS FIST IN DEEP HEAT AND RAMMING IT UP YOUR ARSEHOLE UNTIL THE EVENTUAL END OF THE UNIVERSE”-screaming muppets. I loathe them because they are entirely without purpose. There are animal rights organisations out there that make a difference without fat-shaming, shaming parents for allowing their kids to eat burgers - OH THE HORROR - or violent means. Those are the ones I support. Fuck you, PETA.)

This time around, PETA aren’t getting pissy because Mario has ripped the skin off a tanooki and is running around in it like a lunatic; no. PETA are getting pissy because Pokémon, and have released a flash game where you play as a group of abused Pokémon, getting revenge on their cruel ex-masters. That’s not entirely fair – it’s half “Pokémon makes kids think mistreating animals is totes cool” and half “we know flash, you jelly?”

I’m not giving you a link to the game. It’s a fucking ridiculous piece of propaganda. But if you’re interested, you know where to find it. Kotaku has a few good screens of it, though, if you just want a taster.

I really want to find an awful lot that’s horribly wrong with the game from a technical standpoint, but I’m failing to find a whole hell of a lot wrong. It’s programmed pretty damn well and imitates the style of Pokémon. It’s better than half the shitty Flash games you’d find on Newgrounds,

So ends the list of positives.

I’m quite the fan of the Pokémon games. Because the vast majority of the series have been on handhelds (beginning with Pokémon Red and Blue on the GameBoy, and coming right up to this generation, Pokémon Black and White on the Nintendo DS, I don’t think there’s been a Nintendo handheld released which hasn’t had at least one Pokémon game released on it. Pokémon is Nintendo’s flagship title for handhelds), the series is a great pick up and play. They’re highly accessible RPGs with incredibly basic mechanics and a very clear set of goals – get Pokémon -> train Pokémon -> get badges -> become the best Pokémon master who’s ever lived. Every game mixes this up, of course, in their own special way, and there is the matter of being constantly sidetracked by the misdeeds of Team [THING], the series’ antagonists, but we’ll get to them later. The Pokémon games were an awful lot of my childhood. I’ve played all of the games up to Pokémon Emerald (because the DS is bad and I own it and it makes me feel bad so fuck playing Pearl and Diamond and Black and White and the sequels and THEY’RE BASICALLY ALL THE SAME GAME OK). With that said, let’s discuss the main issue at hand, here:

PETA have utterly missed the entire point of Pokémon.

Ash, thinking how good Pikachu would look in a cage (?)

They seem to be insinuating that the Pokémon games make kids go, “hey, let’s go outside, catch a rat, paint it yellow and chuck it at a pigeon. It’ll be fun”, or “hey keeping Pokémon/animals locked up in a cage all day is awful and you’re a bastard” (which I half agree with). If that’s the message you’ve taken away from the Pokémon games, then y’all be dumb. We’ll use Pokémon Gold for examples from this point, because it’s my favourite game in the series.

In Pokemon Gold, there’s this bunch of totally unrighteous dudes called Team Rocket. They’re mad dickheads. They cut about Johto, where the game’s set, trying to steal Pokémon. You, or rather, in game you, hears this, goes “that shit is totally not on” and battle Team Rocket at every given opportunity in an attempt to crush their organisation. You take out grunts, bosses and head heid-yins. You crush them. It’s a win for the positive treatment of Pokémon, because you, and the gym leaders, and the vast majority of the other trainers, are encouraged to treat your Pokémon like friends. Team Rocket abused the balls off their Pokémon. Were you going to let that stand? Were you fuck.

Team Rocket also cut Pokémon’s (is it Pokémons or Pokémen, by the way? What’s the plural here? Never mind) tails and tried to flog them about Johto. Were you going to stand for the cruel mutilation of countless innocent Pokémon? Were you fuck.

Those Team Rocket SCOUNDRELS!

Another interesting point is the parallel of the player-character to their rival. The rival is shown at the beginning of the game to care not a jot for his Pokémon. They’re instruments of war to him. Later, as you progress and battle him several times, he becomes likeable. He starts to treat his Pokémon better. He improves himself, and in doing so, improves the lives of his Pokémon. I’m almost sure it’s a subtle message for the player, showing them the rewards of self-improvement, and it screams “hey guys, take care of your pets. Take care of your animals. They’re your friends and you’ll be happier for it”. But, y’know, what do I know.

There’s also a strong emotional investment in the game from you, the player. You don’t look at your Pokémon crew and think, “these are my war machines”. You just don’t. Think of your favourite starter Pokémon. Mine’s Charmander. You get little Charmander at level 5. He knows nothing. Professor Oak just caught him. He’s tabula rasa; a blank slate. You take him out into the long grass near the Professor’s lab and, shit the bed, a Caterpie flings itself at you. You have Charmander attack the Caterpie. Eventually, it faints, and you see the tiny little experience bar on the bottom right of the screen get a little bigger. You do this again a few more times. Bang! Charmander’s level 6! You think to yourself, “Jesus, I did that! I helped him grow!” Over time, he levels up more. You get him up to level 16, and something weird happens. He evolves. All of a sudden, you’ve got this new Pokémon, Charmeleon. He’s stronger, faster, more dangerous. Charmander’s all grown up! You battle countless trainers, Pokémon in the wild, gym leaders and friends. Over time, you accumulate losses, as well as victories. With those losses comes a pang of guilt that you could have done more – you dictate Charmeleon’s move set. You could have done something to stop him fainting. Your fault. The onus is entirely on you. But you take him to Nurse Joy at the Pokémon Center, and she helps your friend get back on his feet. More trainers, more battles; level 36 comes around and he evolves again – a Charizard! A fucking fire-breathing dragon! You and your fire-breathing dragon storm through the Elite 4, the four best Pokémon trainers in the region, and you come out on top. You put them in their place. You and your best friend, who you’ve helped raise since he was five, have earned the title of Pokémon Masters. You’re the Cubone’s bollocks, you are.

And the end credits roll, and you save your game. The GameBoy gets switched off. And you realise that Charmander, Charmeleon, Charizard is part of you now. He’s the one who saved your arse in countless fights. He’s the one you raised yourself, no help from anyone else. He was a dragon who could breathe motherfucking fire, and he was your friend who could breathe motherfucking fire. He was pixels on a screen, the back of whose head is now permanently etched into your memory. He was your Charmander. He was more than that. He was someone you put faith into, someone who you were proud of. Someone you took care of, and someone who took care of you. A companion, a private jet, and a friend.

Pokémon teaches kids respect for pets. Respect for animals. It teaches them the value of hard work, and the value of love. It teaches them that if you put your mind to something and work hard, you can achieve it.

So suck my dick, PETA.

Irrational.

Many years ago, my mother bought me a Wii for my birthday. I didn’t ask for a Wii – I didn’t really want a Wii, but I got a Wii, and beggers without a job and a decent seventh gen. console can’t be choosers. While trying to flesh out my library of Wii games, I came across Resident Evil 4.

“Ooh,” I said to myself, “I can get two games for £20. I’ll just pick up Super Mario Galaxy, too. Bargain.”

WHAT A GRIEVOUS ERROR I DID MAKE.

I’m not exactly what you’d call a big fearty. I love horror movies, and I’m not really afraid of anything (even spiders. I know, right? What a badass). Except Survival Horror games. You know, like Resident Evil.

I’ve never finished Resident Evil 4. It’s something I get taunted about constantly. I get to the same bit every time, and I freak out, and then I go “AH JESUS FUCK MUM JESUS FUCK LINDA GET IN HERE AND HOLD ME” (or words to that effect), chuck the remote control across the room and demand to play something nicer. The thing is, the bit isn’t that scary. It’s not like in Project Zero where a ghost pops out of a cupboard and you crap your breeks; it’s not like the mirror room in Silent Hill 3, where you’re forced to stand stock still as your reflection starts to contort and the room fills with blood while your health bar falls. It’s not like that. It isn’t even scary.

Picture the scene: you’re in a laboratory, and you’re alone. You, in this case, are Leon S. Kennedy, Secret Service agent and owner of a very cool jacket. You walk into a small square room, and the only things inside the room are some cupboards and a dentist’s chair. There is nothing else. As you walk in, the door closes behind you. The room becomes intensely claustrophobic. You unlock the door. There’s a tremendous sense of foreboding. Something locked that door behind you. What was it? You exit the room, and there it is:

A humanoid with glowing red eyes that looks like it’s made of steel wool.

They get out of those bags, you know. And they wait for you. They wait.

That’s it. All you have to do is take out your rifle and shoot it in such a way that it’ll die within seconds. Seriously not a big deal. You’ve fought five or six of them before now, and with the rifle, they’re easy to take down. But in my save, I’m low on rifle and pistol ammo. I always resort to fighting it with the knife. And I cannot do it. It freaks me out. It makes me want to stop playing, and just not start again. And now, every single moment of the game leading up to that exact moment, that moment when that steel wool bastard jumps out of fucking nowhere fills me with the utmost dread. I can’t do it. I can’t fight Los Plagas without freaking out. I can’t walk around in game. I can’t keep a watch on Ashley. I just keep thinking of that motherfucking steel wool son of a bitch.

I’m not scared of spiders, heights or dogs, but I’m scared of some pixels on a screen attacking an avatar. God help me.

The Friend Zone

Whenever I hear the term “friend zone”, I like to imagine a holding pen that’s filled with slightly dishevelled looking perma-bachelors who spend all day pacing around, wondering aloud where they went wrong, and why she can’t see him as anything more than a good friend. They all look miserable. There’s the occasional friend zonee with a cigarette hanging limply from his lips as he almost-tearfully sings Mr Brightside to himself. His shirt sleeves are rolled up and he’s clutching a photo of the girl he pines for – across her face, in huge red letters, it reads “I LOVE YOU, BUT I’M NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU”, on the back, there’s a date and the words “JUST FRIENDS”.

I like to imagine that because I’m a horrible person who revels in the pain and misery of others, of course.

According to Wikipedia, this is a painting depicting the Friend Zone in all its sepia glory.

The term “friend zone” has been everywhere for a while, and would you believe it, it irks me a little. The friend zone, for those of you who are lucky enough to be uninitiated, is a place where people – usually males – are forced into when the object of their affections does not want a romantic relationship, and instead, just wants to be friends. Back in my day (my day being, like, 20 minutes ago, because I’m only 20 and therefore still a child), we’d just call this unrequited love, but these new-fangled children of the internet find apparently find that term a touch too Shakespearian, so here we are with the intensely creepy and widespread term “friend zone”.

One of my best friend is a guy, and his name is Bryce. He’s a nice boy, but he’s not my type and I have no desire to have a romantic or sexual relationship with him. I am also not Bryce’s type,  and so we drift through life as two parties in an ongoing platonic love affair. He treats me like one of the lads, and I treat him likewise. We’ve managed to go 15 years without throwing ourselves at each other and shagging like rabbits, and this will continue for as long as we know each other. To many of our horny, knuckle-dragging friends (sorry said friends), we are perfect for each other because we have the same interests and we are friends and Bryce owns a penis and I own a vagina. To these same friends, I am apparently a massive, friend zoning monster. In their minds, I am an awful bitch who has told Bryce in no uncertain terms that he has a permanent place in the friend zone. They fail to understand that two people of different genders are able to be friends without shagging. That can actually happen. No, seriously. It scared me too when I found out. The thing they fail to understand is that neither of us want that kind of relationship, and because they fail to understand this, we have had to endure gentle ribbing/annoying fucking idiots telling us we should fuck because they think it’s a brilliant idea since day dot. It totally sucks.

The internet – specifically as I have seen, Reddit – seems to perpetuate this idea that Friend Zoning is done exclusively by women, and is a horrible thing that will destroy your life and you might as well just kill yourself because nobody she doesn’t want you and nobody wants you and blah blah blah blah whinge whine moan. It’s such an issue that men’s magazines have actually begun writing articles on how you can stop a woman friend zoning you. The advice is actually quite comical – lots of laddish Unilad-esque “journalists” writing about how women have emotions, and your wanting to bone the shit out of them causes conflict within them that your throbbing member just can’t solve; lots of claiming to know the inner-workings of women, lots of reminders that “you are a sexual being”, “you don’t need a woman”, “you don’t need her”, etc, and it’s funny, because it just perpetuates this odd sort of assumption that friend zoning is a gender-specific issue. That’s not true. A fair few times in my short and uneventful life, I’ve found myself inside the friend zone pen with the other perma-bachelors, but shit happens, and I get on with it. Admittedly, my “getting on with it” is not exactly filled with joy and prancing, but I do attempt to get on with it.

My problem with the whole “friend zone” thing is that it’s all a bit…well, it’s stupid. Let’s say you’re a guy and you’ve asked out this girl. She says no, because she doesn’t want to go out with you, and suddenly, you find yourself emotionally vulnerable and without a girlfriend. So? That’s life. Sometimes, girls don’t like you. Sometimes, guys don’t like you either. But fortunately, that girl or guy is not the only girl or guy in the world, and you’ll probably meet someone else who actually wants to do all those things with you that people in a relationship do. The friend zone is just a way to justify wallowing in self-pity, and it’s actually a little bit stupid.

Occasionally, in your long, mostly uneventful and often a bit rubbish life, you will come across people who just want to be your friend, while you want to ride them like Tommy Stack rode Red Rum to victory in the 1977 Grand National, but ultimately, that’s not going to happen. You’re just going to have to take a step back, acknowledge that you’re lucky to have a friend you care for so much, and go chase some other tail. The friend zone isn’t a big deal if you don’t make it one. And remember, nobody puts you in the friend zone. You just resign yourself there after someone wounds your ego.

I regale you far too often with tales of how terrible my work is. Let me tell you a good story.

A little while ago, three kids came into my shop with their Mum. They were quite obviously uninterested in the clothes, so I let them stand up with me at the desk. The first was a boy of around 8, who was reading a Star Wars comic, so I asked him what his favourite Star Wars film was. He said it was Episode 4, and I laughed and told him that was the best answer he could have given. The second was his little sister, who was maybe 6. She told me all about how her little brother was a “sabotage agent”, and how he hurt her with his scooter. The third was a boy who could have been no older than 12, and he was reading a book about poetry. He had his nose stuck very firmly in the book, so I left him to read.

After a little while, he took his head out of the book, looked at me and announced, “I have a favourite poem”. “Oh yeah?,” I replied, “and what poem would that be?”. He moved round to the front of the desk – centre stage – and gave a rousing performance of Edwin Muir’s The Horses. He didn’t falter on a single line; I was impressed. He asked me if I knew who wrote it, and I did, so I told him I did. He asked if I knew what it was about, and I did, so I told him. He seemed quite taken aback. I told him that I studied poetry in school, and that my favourite poet was Edwin Morgan. He asked me if I could tell him an Edwin Morgan poem, and I told him I could. So I took centre stage, and this is what I told him:

(The Loch Ness Monster’s Song by Edwin Morgan)

Sssnnnwhuffffll?
Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnfl hfl?
Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g glbgl.
Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl fl fl -
gm grawwwww grf grawf awfgm graw gm.
Hovoplodok – doplodovok – plovodokot – doplodokosh?
Splgraw fok fok splgrafhatchgabrlgabrl fok splfok!
Zgra kra gka fok!
Grof grawff gahf?
Gombl mbl bl -
blm plm,
blm plm,
blm plm,
blp

(Unlike the kid, though, I didn’t have it memorised. I had to read it off my phone. I did my Loch Ness Monster voice though, and he seemed to like that, which made up for it a little.)

He thanked me (and he giggled a little too, because it’s a silly poem, and that’s to be expected), and he said I was really cool. I don’t think anyone’s ever said I was cool for liking poetry, except my Mum, and she was being sarcastic. I told him he was cool too, because I don’t get many kids coming into my shop and telling me Edwin Muir poems, and that if he ever came in again, I expected another poem. He told me his name was Ruaridh and I told him I was Katie. He was beaming, and it felt really awesome.

Then his Mum bought a top, and apologised for her kids annoying me when I had work to do. I corrected her politely – I had nothing to do, and her kids were three of the coolest children I’d ever had the fortune of meeting.

I’m still waiting for that kid to come back in with a new poem.

The Good, The Bad, and The Uwe Boll

If you know two things about me (excluding my name, sex, age, height, favourite pokemon, etc.), you’ll know that I have two passions: bad movies and video games. You’d think that a combination of these two things would be my nirvana, wouldn’t you?

You’d be right, actually. Well done.

The 1994 movie Street Fighter, based on the games series of the same name, is one of my favourite movies of all time. Top 10, if not top 5. I know it sucks. You’ve seen it; you know it sucks. But you can’t deny the sheer, unbridled joy you feel during scenes like this:

Watch that and tell me it’s not brilliant. Watch that and tell me you don’t at least guffaw when you see the glorious Raul Julia strut up to Ming-Na and coldly inform her that he couldn’t give less of a fuck about her dad – the whole reason she’s been after Bison was to get revenge for her father – or the way he died. Raul fuckin’ Julia, ladies and gentleman! What a man! What an actor! What an…odd choice to play M. Bison! You see, in the Street Fighter games, M. Bison (the Big Bad) is a huge, muscular, looming man; he’s next to never characterised as anything other than “this man is a bastard who wants to Hitler up and take the planet – better land a few roundhouses on his fizog”. Raul Julia would probably not be any sensible person’s first choice to be M. Bison, but even that has a smashing story behind it. In 1993, Julia was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He took the role of Bison – which would be his last Hollywood role before dying of complications from a stroke in October 1994 – as his kids were massive fans of the video games, and thought they’d enjoy seeing their Dad as the Big Bad. Cool guy, huh? Julia’s performance is perhaps the best thing about the whole movie. He is the very definition of a large ham. His performance is perfect.

As with everything though, there is a line. There are bad movies like Street Fighter, then there is pure, unadulterated fucking shite. I’m talking Uwe Boll here, ladies and gentlemen. Uwe fucking Boll. The worst thing to happen to video games since the Call of Duty franchise.

This is Uwe Boll. His last film was a kind of naziploitation film about Auschwitz. Yes. Seriously. From the director of Postal: The Movie comes… Auschwitz!

Uwe Boll is a German writer, producer and director who has written, produced and directed some of the worst movies of all time. He is not “so bad it’s good”. He is “so bad, it is a fucking abortion of a movie which could never have been greenlit by any sane, reasonable human being”. This is a man who has challenged people who have publicly stated he is shit to a boxing match. He is a manchild. He is a terrible writer. He is a terrible director. I’m not really sure what a producer actually does, but fuck it, let’s just assume for fun that he sucks at that too. He does not make good movies. He sullies the name of video games like House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark. He is a bad man. He is a terrible, terrible man, and how he ever became so well known is absolutely beyond me. This video effectively summarizes everything that is wrong with him:

Incidentally, something about him that also annoys me is that he’s mentioned on Godfrey Ho’s Wikipedia page. Godfrey Ho is nothing like Uwe Boll. Godfrey Ho, for those of you unaware, is a director of Hong-Kong B-movies. He’s directed over 100 movies (most of which have the word “ninja” in the title – because they’re about ninjas, duh), that were more or less two completely different movies spliced together to make one awesome yet completely nonsensical movie with NINJAS EVERYWHERE. He’s basically Ed Wood if Ed Wood had been born in Hong-Kong and gave exactly zero fucks about the art of dubbing movies. Ho was a bit mental, though, and often didn’t write proper scripts for his films, since his actors would be dubbing them later anyway, which made it hell for the dub actors. He also once killed a dog for one of his films, which was being filmed in the middle of summer, and kept the dog in a fridge to keep it “fresh” for later scenes. That last bit isn’t really important. What is important is that is that Godfrey Ho is nothing like Uwe Boll – he was renowned for his use of stock footage and splicing, and actually made really cool, if not incredibly shlocky movies, whereas Uwe Boll makes big budget Hollywood crapfests.

Anyway. Uwe Boll is the writer/director/producer of some of the worst video game movies ever made, including House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark. The problem with Uwe Boll is that he just does not fucking try. As much as I’ve slated him, and will continue to do so, he’s not completely inept as a director (as a writer, yes. And I will not take “oh, English isn’t his first language” as an excuse. Write them in German then, shithead. I have seen BloodRayne 3. There is absolutely no fucking excuse for the dialouge in that film). His direction is occasionally alright – not brilliant, just alright, and this applies exclusively to his latest films. The older ones…they’re bad. The direction is bad. But it’s the writing that makes his video game adaptions terrible.

I look at posters like this and wonder if Uwe Boll is the kind of guy who masturbates over how intelligent he thinks he is, because our mere mortal pornography can never satisfy him.

A video game is a kind of movie in itself, only you – the player – are deciding the actions that the actors take, to an extent. Sometimes the ending to the psuedo-movie you’re playing can change depending on the path you direct your actors to follow. Have I tired out this metaphor yet? I hope so. This makes video games inherently hard to make movies of, because they’re kind of already movies. Making movies of video games is simple on paper but hard in premise because there are a lot of things you have to account for. The reason I like the Street Fighter movie is that it takes the basic plot of the video games, and very little is lost in the transition to celluloid: the characters from the game are still there, and so is the plot of the game, to an extent. Boll doesn’t give a fuck about the games he’s basing his movies on. He takes the series’ name and goes “fuck it, I’ll whack in some car chases”. Alone in the Dark could not have anything less to do with the video games of the same name – the video games are atmospheric horror games, where as Boll’s Alone in the Dark is a series of car chases and gun fights. About the only thing Boll got right was the main character’s name, which is…actually kind of sad. You can watch a kind of MST3k’ing of it by a few members of the That Guy With the Glasses team here which not only explains what is wrong with the movie, but why it is a piece of fucking garbage.

Uwe Boll is where the worst of video games and movies collide. He is bad, he is wrong, but at least in Postal, he gets shot in the balls.

I work in retail, selling shit clothes for shit wages.

I have a shitty job.

Lots of people have shitty jobs. I bet you probably have a shitty job, and if you don’t, you’ve probably had several in the past. You might have worked for the council, or as a barista in Starbucks, or as an advisor in a bank. You might have been a doorman, someone who makes pizza, someone who delivers pizza, working behind the bar in a shitty hotel, or someone who flips burgers.

I, on the other hand, flog overpriced, badly made blazers to old ladies.

(To the uninitiated – I’m a shop assistant.)

Like in your shitty job, I’ve got quotas to meet. Get 10 loyalty cards a day. Make 10 sales of full price items a day. Sell 4 hats, 5 bags, 6 dresses. That’s fine. If I don’t do that, that’s ok. All that happens is my area manager phones me and shouts down the phone at me. That’s fine. I can deal with that. That only happens once every few weeks. The same thing probably happened to you when you worked your shitty job. It might even happen to you in your good job. We all get that. And we all get pissed and get on with it. I do paperwork – if I get it wrong, I get my boss breathing down my neck for the rest of the day. I spend hours spacing every single hanger in the shop a finger’s width apart – God forbid I get that wrong, because then I get the joy of my colleagues breathing down my neck, too. But that’s all ok. I can deal with all of that. I can get over all of that pretty quickly.

But there’s always something worse, isn’t there? Always one thing. And if you work with the public, like almost all of us do, it’s always the same problem, isn’t it?

Customers. Fucking customers.

Let me tell you a brief, somewhat unfunny tale of a particularly notorious customer who tries to get me fired at least once a week (to the point where I am now sent off the shop floor when she comes in for fear of what might happen – seriously). We’ll call her Mrs White.

Mrs White shops in my store 3 times a week. We stock 4 different brands in the concession I work for, and she has taken a shine to one of the brands, particularly. She’s bought everything we’ve ever sold in that brand, and she’s not worn one single bit of it. She could open a museum and exhibit all the clothes we’ve sold from that brand for the five years our concession has existed. Also, she’s a mental old bitch. She lives on a diet of shortbread and fizzy juice and comes in every week claiming to have a new thing wrong with her (this week: brain aneurysm). She has no idea how to take a joke. She is terrifying, she is actively trying to get me fired for no apparent reason, and she is the bane of my life.

(I should at this point say that Mrs White has had many shop assistants fired in her time stalking the shops of Glasgow. She is notorious. Few survive interaction with her.)

Now. Mrs White came in one day to buy a t-shirt. I was the only one in the shop at the time, as my boss was on her break. She asked me if I had the t-shirt, and I sheepishly told her no, we didn’t. So she, in a rare moment of kindness, reached over, touched my bare arm and said, “don’t you worry about it pet, I’ll get it next week”. Her hand lingered for a second, before she told me, “ooh, you aren’t half warm, are you?”. I laughed, and made a weak joke about being warm blooded because I wanted the bitch to stop touching me. Mrs White then informed me that she was cold. Always cold. Never far from her fireplace because she was always so horribly, terribly cold. She smiled her toothy smile, and extended the hand that had once been on my arm towards me for me to reciprocate her action. So I did. I touched her hand, laughed and said “you’re very cold Mrs White”. And she agreed. Then her face contorted into a grim expression; I assume she’d had an idea. She leaned back on a rail behind her, removed her shoe, then her sock. She looked me in the eyes, and this is exactly what she said:

“Touch my foot.”

No, I thought, no, I can’t stand feet. I try to avoid touching my own feet. I don’t take off my shoes in the house to avoid my own feet, for God’s sake. I don’t like feet. Feet are gross. So politely, I refused.

“Touch. My. Foot,” she repeated sternly. And suddenly, I realised that if I didn’t touch her foot, I would lose my job. She’s got people fired for less. She is mental. She is a psychopath. She is dangerous. She is mad. She is a terrible, awful, hideous bastard and I have to touch her foot to save my shitty job.

So I touched her foot. I reached out, and I touched her foot. For the sake of my shitty job, for the sake of my bank balance, I touched the old bitch’s foot. And it was awful. Cold. Wrinkly. Just…awful. Like touching rotten old meat. Ok, at least I was now completely assured that Mrs White’s circulation was somewhat out of whack, or her veins were carrying liquid nitrogen around her body; one of the two, but did she have to force me to touch her foot just so I could find that out? My hand has never felt the same way since. I still have flashbacks to that moment. But I still have my shitty job.

What that story probably failed to do was show some of the unreasonable demands made on those of us with shitty jobs where we work with people. Obviously, there’s worse things. And worse things have been said to me (normally pertaining to my weight) – “I’d buy that dress if the fat cow behind the desk wasn’t putting me off it”, “Can you sell clothes you’re too fat to wear?”; I’ve been called stupid, worthless, a woman told me she thought I had brain damage; all nice things – but Mrs White insisting that I touch her feet was the one that caused me the most physical discomfort. I’ve also had someone return £250 worth of clothes and submit a formal complaint about me as I was being, and I quote, “far too nice”. I’ve had a woman phone from the opposite side of the city demanding I bring clothes over to her house so she can try them on (who had no intention of paying for my transport if I were to actually agree to her somewhat dubious request). I’ve never understood why people seem to go out of their way to cause distress to workers in the public sector. Don’t get me wrong – I know it’s not always the customer’s fault (I did once attempt to get help in River Island and after 10 minutes of being dicked about by some of the rudest people I’ve ever met, I wanted to arm myself with a pair of stilettos and go on a killing spree), but the customer is most definitely not always right, and in 90% of cases, I’ve had something relatively offensive spat in my face because the customer was wrong. Because they’ve not understood that I can’t double-dip discounts, I can’t magic their size of t-shirt out of the stock room, or because two t-shirts that look quite similar but are different colours are different prices and they demand both tops at the lower price. It’s annoying, but unfortunately, it seems to be a necessary evil of working with the public.

That’s not to say I’m not grateful for having a shitty job – I am, I’d just prefer a non-shitty one. All I ask is that you make my life a little easier and at least smile at me when I say hello.

Incoherent Thoughts on Akira; or, Pissing on my Biscuits

For many, Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira will have been their first exposure to Japanese animation, especially if they grew up in the 80s or 90s. Even now, almost 24 years after the film’s original release in Japan, it’s considered one of the most epic and beautiful films to have come from Japan, and it’s inspired just as many writers, directors and animators as it has confused those attempting to understand its complex plot. The reason Akira‘s plot is so complex is that Otomo attempted to condense his 6 volume, 2182 page manga (which originally ran in Japan’s Young Magazine for 8 years from 1982 until 1990) into a feature length film, meaning it runs for just over two hours, drops many of the manga’s important sub-plots, and draws mainly from the first 3 volumes – although this is in part due to the manga not having been completed when the film was in production. Akira in its manga and anime form is considered a landmark; the drawing style in the manga, manor of storytelling and stupidly complex plot was something unheard of at the time, and the film revolutionised Japanese film-making and proved anime to be a legitimate and enjoyable form of storytelling (as an example, because most scenes took place at night, some of the colours used in the anime’s painstakingly hand-drawn cells had to be created especially for the film – most animes that came before Akira were set in the day time, or in bright rooms to save the animators work or hassle) to foreign audiences.

Guys, just squint. It's totally Neo-Manhattan. Totally.

Can you tell that I really, really love Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira?

Fanboy wank aside, Akira is in no way perfect. Not by a long shot. Like I said, it’s a bitch to understand, it’s over two hours long, and the manga is a fucking epic piece of work in itself. Don’t try and tell me that it’s easy to read because it’s a picture book. I will slap you upside the goddamn head. Akira is riddled with mistakes, and its fanbase is rabid. A bunch of mental, rabid lunatics. It’s fine for me to say that though, as I am one of those mental, rabid lunatics. I love Akira. I still remember the first time I saw it, and even though I didn’t know what was going on, I fucking loved it. As I got older and watched it more, I started to understand it – just a little though, it’s a pretty difficult film to get your head round. Akira – set in Neo-Tokyo in 2019 – tells the story of Shotaro Kaneda, leader of the biker gang the Capsules (he’s the one with the pill on his jacket and the cool bike), and his best pal Tetsuo Shima. One fine night, while picking a fight with rival biker gang the Clowns, Tetsuo crashes into a wee green midget with superpowers and gets his ass hauled off by the military to be experimented on. Kaneda doesn’t put up with shit like that, so he gets on his bike and tries to save Tetsuo from his uncertain fate. Unbeknownst to Kaneda, Tetsuo has acquired superpowers akin to the god-like Akira, a wee boy who accidentally blew up Tokyo 31 years before the story started. Tetsuo decides that he doesn’t need saved, goes a touch mental and decides to hunt down Akira for a showdown of epic proportions (destroying everything in his way), and Kaneda’s not cool with that, so in turn, he goes after Tetsuo to get his own epic showdown on. It makes you laugh, makes you cry, and although I make it sound like Tetsuo’s the film’s antagonist, he really isn’t. It’s got more themes than I’ve had hot dinners (cyberpunk, how the world will rebuild and regrow after a nuclear holocaust, corruption, the will to power and idolatry to name but a few) and is just generally good fun and fucking cool.

I would be surprised if you hadn’t noticed how much I love Akira by now. So you might not be entirely surprised to learn that I wasn’t particularly pleased with the announcement of Warner Brother’s live action remake/re-imagining that was slated for a 2013 released.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to show you how cool Kaneda's bike is. That is all.

Talks first began in 2002, and everything got worse from there. Gary Whitta (Book of Eli, Undying) was originally set to write the screenplay. Later, we learned Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Children of Men, Cowboys and Aliens) would be helping Whitta in this mighty task. We heard Leonardo Di Caprio would be in it, Joseph Gordon Levitt, that Keanu Reeves would be Kaneda (then 11 days later, we heard otherwise); we heard Helena Bonham Carter had taken the part of Lady Miyako, that amongst others James McAvoy, Andrew Garfield, Paul Dano and Michael Pitt would audition for the part of Tetsuo and that Ken Wanatabe will play The Colonel. But worst of all, we heard the plot.

This live action remake/re-imagining/whatever of Akira is set to be a two parter, the first part of the film focusing on volumes 1-3 of Otomo’s manga, and the 2nd part to focus on volumes 4-6. This is good. This would mean that the film would, if done right, be a comprehensive and complete translation to screen of the original manga, unlike the ’88 film. What are the chances of it being done right, though? By the looks of things – minimal.

Not long back, some bright spark noticed this post on Acting Auditions which gave away a bit of the film’s plot:

Kaneda (Garrett Hedlund) is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother, Tetsuo, is abducted by government agents led by The Colonel.

Desperate to get his brother back, Kaneda agrees to join with Ky Reed (Kristen Stewart) and her underground movement who are intent on revealing to the world what truly happened to New York City thirty years ago when it was destroyed. Kaneda believes their theories to be ludicrous but after finding his brother again, is shocked when he displays telekinetic powers.

Ky believes Tetsuo is headed to release a young boy, Akira, who has taken control of Tetsuo’s mind. Kaneda clashes with The Colonel’s troops on his way to stop Tetsuo from releasing Akira but arrives too late. Akira soon emerges from his prison courtesy of Tetsuo as Kaneda races in to save his brother before Akira once again destroys Manhattan island, as he did thirty years ago.

Which… doesn’t sound too bad. Ok, so Kirsten Stewart’s (apparently) going to be in it, and they’ve made Kaneda and Tetsuo brothers, and they’ve set it in Manhattan after some manor of attack, so it will inevitably have something to do with 9-11, because FUCK YOU WE MADE THIS FILM IN THE LAND OF THE FREE AND WE ARE ‘MURRICANS AND WE HATE TERRORISTS, etc., and most of the actors will invariably be white, but…I mean…it could be…be worse. Couldn’t it?

What really fucks me off, and why I really don’t want Akira made is that Warner Brothers are pissing on my biscuits, figuratively speaking. Imagine, if you will, that I love biscuits (which I do), and that I want to continue enjoying the same lovely biscuits I’ve been eating for years. Warner Brothers want to piss on those biscuits. They want to piss all over my lovely biscuits. They want to change the movie that I love, and I don’t want that, because I really don’t like change – especially change that looks like it’s going to be for the worse. They want to take Akira out of Japan, they want to fill it with Caucasian Americans, they want to cast KRISTEN “FUCKING FACE LIKE A SKELPED ARSE” STEWART. They’ll make Kaneda into a James Dean Rebel Without a Cause wannabe, they’ll turn Tetuso into the villain when he’s really just a kid overwhelmed by power; they’ll make Kai eye candy, or even worse, KRISTEN STEWART. They want to fuck with something I love, and if I could be assured that this wouldn’t be such a mess, I might not be so skeptical. But Americanizing foreign films is something that has rarely, if ever, gone right, and I don’t want to see a film I love being associated with such a massive piece of steaming dog shite.

But, thank the Gods, the film has been put on hold. For now, we are safe.

For now.