Month: July 2007

Just been watching a new Silent Witness episode. There’s a new cop guy character, who in this episode qualifies for the over-acting award.

I’m wondering if anyone ever does much OverActing in real life. Over RE-acting sure, I do that all the time. But over-acting .. something quite different.

I imagine it’d be a lot like the Brick (Steve Carrell) character in Anchorman.

Now can you see what I’m saying?

LOUD NOISES!

That kind of thing. Talking normally then raising the bar at strange and wonderful moments.

You could burst into tears and then .. in an inexplicable change of character, clench your fist and pound the wall at the injustice of there being no more chocolate biscuits left in the office kitchen.

Another classic effort would be to wait around to corner at home time (in the work office, naturally), watching as everyone piles into the lift .. then when the doors are closing, race around the corner, screaming and yelling that you must get on the lift. This has to be timed perfectly .. you have to do it when there’s absolutely no way they can stop the lift .. and you have to bodily crash into the doors. Then get up, brush your pants, and smile.

As I’m writing this benign splurg of imagination, it’s quite easy to see that over-acting goes on all the time. Contrary to my thoughts at the top of the post. It might not be Steve Carrell or Ricky Gervais (yeah, both of them play the greatest over-actor in the lead char of the Office) .. but it still happens.

So, on monday, take a step back from work life and try and see just what over-acting goes on. Note it down. Post it on a blog. Maybe even comment here.

I haven’t seen a good troubadour character (in stories) for a while.

The last one I can distinctly remember on telly was in Gilmore Girls. Now that show used to be something ..

Ahem. The travelling minstrel, the wanderer, is a great character to use in stories. Especially noise media, movies, theatre, tv, even radio i suspect. You get a live onstage person. You can counterpoint what the characters are saying at that time with some music from the troubadour.

You couldn’t overuse the troubadour. Like i’m overusing troubadour the word. Troubadour. But in normal doses, they are a powerful tool in the creator’s arsenal.

Speaking of arsenal .. has anyone on the planet watched posh spice’s new tv show and thought "Now, I wish I could watch more of this classic telly!". Actually, I guess there would be some people who thought that. Not me alas.

See, not knowing much of the posh spice world, and even though she is plastered across magazines and telly and the like, there was still an aura of .. grace. Or something closely resembling it. Maybe not that good, but cool and calm.

Then out comes this paris wannabe show and crushes that into dust. Then sweeps it out into a hurricane. There shouldn’t be room in the world for more than one or two crazy blonde women doing lame "i’m so dumb" impressions for the millions of adoring fans.

Bit of a rant. Got sidetracked from the troubadour.

I’ve been thinking of getting back into the comic drawing thing. It takes a lot of time. But still, is worth it I think.

Am trying to remember the situations I used to get in when playing Bards Tale. "Mapping My Way Home", hacking the numbers so that my monk (or whatever he was) had negative sixty-five thousand hitpoints, checking every single wall panel for a secret door. Good times. Good times.

Anyway, just have to think of some logical Funny, and there would be a couple of good comics in those memories.

Last week, our garage was broken into. Now .. we live in a block of 10 apartments (we’re number 10 .. whoot).

Our garage is underground, and you have an electronic roller door as the guardian to our car dungeon.

Not only that, but unit number 10 gets a special batcave. We have our own electronic roller door, on a rather nice and large car hold (ha ha .. moe (Simpsons) gets me every time with that line). There’s a bunch of boxes full of assorted stuff stacked at the end of our carhold. Decided one word was better than two.

Last week, when the Thieves (decided they were important enough for a capital, as you’ll see down the page) broke in, they smashed the windows of two other cars. Then, I can only imagine with the strength of ten tigers, or hulk smashing, or a proton energy pill .. they reefed open our garage door, like you rip open a tin of sardines. Well, almost like that.

Anyway, our nice new (9 months) people mover was in the garage. They left it unmolested. They also did not seem to have touched a single item of stacked boxes, computer game cases, plastic boxes, boxes .. and a big not-working airconditioner.

There really is nothing of value in there. Except my skateboard. Ahhh the memories.

This morning, as I was saying goodbye to the family, the police stepped out of the lift.

Turns out that a replica moment was enacted last night. Can’t be sure if it was the same hooligans .. whoops, Thieves .. but they broke the windows on the same car as last time (one of them at least), and the peeled back our now-damaged door again.

This time however, they really got stuck into the boxes and so forth at the back of our carhold. It’s messy now. Real messy.

I’m very smart though. You see, for the past few months, the twin fluorescent lights in our car room haven’t been working that well. The light is very dim.

See my plan. By being lazy, I have hindered the Thieves. If they could have seen by the bright snazzy normal fluro light, perhaps they could have found something, or been more organised.

As it is, they had to take stuff out into the real lights to see what was inside. And they only managed to take one bag outside.

Fortunately for us, not so for them, it contained nothing more than fake jewelry and my old baby clothes.

Apart from a slight concern now that it’s premeditated crime (the first could have been opportunistic), I have to wonder ..

Let’s hit up this place again. Maybe this time the junk in the back of their Carhold will have drugs, or real jewelry, or computer parts we can sell for drugs. Or whatever it is we want.

How about this. We’ll go through their stuff this time, but for the second time, we’ll leave their new car alone. Not only that, but we won’t break into cars that are actually expensive looking, we’ll target middle of the range cars.

I’m afraid I don’t really understand the stealing brain. But then, that’s okay.