Travelogue: Part Two

(Again, this post has been presented pretty much as it was written. I'm quite pleased with this one, in actual fact, so if you do get a laugh out of it let me know!)


Well, I just figured out how it is that my universal, right-round-the-world plug adaptor actually works, so that means my laptop is up and running and that means I'm back to work. 'Work' being a relative term, being as I'm cruising at 33,000 feet in comfort aboard a Korean airlines aircraft. Economy really isn't as bad as it used to be, judging by the shiny screens, the movie selection and the insistence of the in-flight advertisments (I still have the urge to think of them as propaganda, thanks, Doctor Steel). That means it's time for the thrilling second installment of Troy's travels!

Bibimbap. I learned about something new in the world of cuisine just now. I'm not really a fussy eater by any means, most that know me will attest to the fact, but I have to admit that I do much prefer when my food is actually cooked. When I can readily identify the constituent ingredients with a quick glance at the plate you're not necessarily turning me off, but I like to know that heat was, at some point, applied to my meal. I'll let you know what a bibimbap is, though. You take a bowl. Into that you throw some shredded green thing, some diced white thing which is potentially onion, a second green thing which is neatly sliced and something brown which I think is masquerading as some kind of meat replacement. To throw on top of that you're given a little container of steamed rice which has been thoughtfully permitted to cool and go sticky, along with a small sachet of seasame oil and some hot sauce in a little tube.

I do say 'throw on top' due to the fact that this is a Construct Your Own Meal adventure brought to you by the ingenuity of Korean Airlines, and after the initial gleeful mania of hurling everything I don't recognize into a bowl and giving it a quick mash with your fork wears off, you're left with something that looks like someone who had a serious grudge against vegetables attacked them with... well, hot sauce and some rice. This wouldn't upset me nearly half as much were it not for the way that bibimbap were presented to me in the first place.

"Excuse me, sir, the options for the meal tonight are beef or bibimbap."

Not wanting to push the boat out too far on my first venture into Korean cuisine without at least some forewarning, I put on my best smile and answered, "I'll have the beef, please."

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir, but we have run out of beef."

Korean girl, your uniform is pressed very nicely and your smile is sincere, but you can't possibly be serious about how that conversation just took place. I struggle. Under ordinary circumstances I'd ask why, but I know very well the answer. Every passenger aboard with a passport that isn't green had the same idea as me. I want to explain to the stewardess that presenting this to me as an option is roughly on par with what my mother used to do with me when I was a child. Present to me the illusion of choice before deciding on a course of action and politely informing me of it. This bugged me sixteen years ago and it bugs the hell out of me now, too.

Very carefully, trying to ignore the potential for a flashback, I return the stewardess' smile as best I'm able. "Sorry, so, uh... what are the options?"

"Beef or bibimbap."

"But there's no beef."

"That's right, sir, I'm sorry."

It wouldn't matter at this point if Bibimbap was an eight foot tall amazon slathered in barbeque sauce carrying a bottle of tequila in one hand and a basket of limes in the other. What I want, now, completely irreconcilable with reality, is the beef. The stewardess is smiling at me, still, in the zeptosecond it's taken me to try and force this grim fact on my now attentive stomach. Beef? it wonders aloud, giving me a quick tickle to remind me of its presence. We like bee-WHAT. I've just heard from up top. Is this shit true?

Yes, it's true. The options are beef-or-bibimbap-but-there-is-no-beef.

I'm starting to wonder if I'm not being set up. Is this a proving ground for comedy material? Is Eddie Izzard lurking somewhere to jot down my reaction? "Is there anything else?" I ask, still smiling the rictus of a man preparing himself for a second sucker punch.

"The only other option is the bibimbap, sir."

That's that, then. I cast my vote like a Russian at the polls. "I'll have the bibimbap, please."

The service is quick and there is wine. I prepare my tray for the meal laid out in front of me and inspect it as it arrives. There's a chance, at least, that there's something good still available somewhere on this place. I can't readily identify any of this, though! I unwrap my fork and spoon to start digging apprehensively around the outskirts of this unlikely meal. Hell, I'd even settle for an eight inch amazon at this point, but she's not to be found and any promises of the tequila with her quickly evaporate. Damn. There's a glimmer of hope, however! To the right hand side of my tray is something gently steaming, something that's been prepared - or even just microwaved - and presented to me as a hot option. God, thank you, there's a chance. Has there been a mistake? Is this both bibimbap and beef on the same tray?

It doesn't take long to inspect the foil and dash my hopes. Seaweed soup. Now, before you turn your nose up and cringe at the mention of it, I've never had seaweed soup. I know that it's a staple of many diets in asia and the pacific, so I lift my shoulders in a figurative shrug and decide I might as well hedge my bets. Get the hot food in me first to improve my mood and then tackle trying to graze on the unruly hodge-podge of miscellaneous forestry that's been arrayed in front of me.

Seaweed soup tastes about as good as you'd expect something called seaweed soup to taste. I make a little 'smek smek smek' face with my lips and give it a chance. It promptly decides that this is its chance to make a full assault on my tastebuds. I am not subject to the Operation Overlord of taste invasions. Okay, I can deal with that. I'm not even getting the US invasion of Grenada over here, so, okay, I've got to set my standards a little lower. Perhaps the Korean people are used to things being very bland? I don't know. I'm a foreigner to their land and customs and increasingly their cuisine. I push my tongue to the roof of my mouth on a manhunt for the flavour of seaweed soup and what I get back is a few tertiary reports from tastebuds long thought lost on a mission to the Plains of Bland. I had hoped for a full-scale thermonuclear war on my senses. I got two guys in a squad car.

I put the seaweed soup aside and focussed on the bibimbap. It came with hot-... shit. SHIT! I just realised as I write this that I had a small tube of pepper sauce available to smear over the bibimbap. Why didn't I think to put that in my seaweed soup?! Shit! That's fucking genius! Damn. I'm going to have real trouble letting that go. Damn.

Alright. The bibimbap. It actually came with instructions! Our row of three was given a small card instruction sheet for how to successfully orient the food in your bowl without looking like a complete and total fuck up. Here, I took a picture of it for you all.

Doesn't it look appetising? That doesn't look remotely like a bowl of chunder, does it? Of course not! Sick would at least be warm! I'm staring down at the monstrosity I've unleashed with a few deft swipes of my fork and preparing to steel myself for the moment I know has to come. I'm hungry. I'm not going to eat for another ten hours. It's beef. It's beef. It came from a cow and has been thoroughly mistreated at the hand of an expert chef who was brought down from his hermitage atop the Himalayas by a team of sherpas and one plucky alpaca with the sole intent of producing something that I will find palatable. Don't worry, Troy. Bibimbap is greasy, uneven and cold - not even properly cold, but the half-chilled of food left unattended long enough to lose its heat from the oven. This is beef. This is everything you wanted. Take your fork, tuck in, take a mouthful. Savour what the ancient art of a hermit chef long thought lost to the world has wrought.

Bibimbap tastes like shit.

If all that build up made you expect some more grand explanation of what I had to eat, ask yourself, are you disappointed? If you are, you're a fraction of the way closer to understanding what I had to endure at that first mouthful of my first exposure to Korean cuisine. It tastes like leftovers out of the fridge. Cold, a little formless after you've stirred it into the bowl to try and kick the flavour awake, but just inoffensive enough as a result that you're left desperating wanting a reason to really kick back and unleash the fury on this stuff. I'm not even scarred by the experience. Just deflated.

The stewardess brought me a beer, though. I'm not too upset about that. I'm trying to read the writing on the can and I just can't shake the feeling that it looks like the 'hieroglyphics' from Futurama. I am enjoying this beer. I think the first thing I do when I get off the plane in New Zealand is head to a bakery and get myself a pie.

You can guess what kind.

Travelogue: Part One

(Author's note: These are presented without editing, as per usual, as I sat in various places with my laptop on the journey from England to New Zealand. Good luck and god speed, my poor readers, as the first content in an age is the ravings of a man without sleep.)


I've never been one to travel well, which is ironic how many times I actually have. I've toured parts of the world I never thought when I was a boy that I'd ever see, and despite this I still get the jitters when it comes up that I'm going to have to get on a bus, board a train or pack for a flight. I just don't like it. I'm a remarkably sedentary person when I can be, known to remain still for periods of hours, even days, with breaks only to roll over slightly or to make an emergency dash to the bathroom when necessary. If I thought I could avoid peeing without the messy business of having a catheter installed? I'd be on that like a shot, you can believe me. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm lazy, but I definitely favour an economy of motion that might be best described as 'borderline responsive.'

Somehow, though, I'm at Heathrow International Airport's terminal four waiting for a plane to take me to Seoul, where I will then be whisked away the rest of the distance to Auckland, New Zealand. I can't really say with any degree of certainty what it is that's actually going through my head at this point. I'm running on empty, operating on reserve power; the usual euphemisms for being out-of-my-mind blank and drifting through security checkpoints and baggage carousels and clouds of lost, chattering people staring at screens they're far too far away from to read properly. I can't help but think that at some point I made a fairly poor decision, or maybe the right decision for the wrong reasons. I'm not going on holiday, you see. I'm going home.

I don't know when it was that England and I first started to have difficulties in our relationship. First it was subtle things. The little things that England did were really starting to piss me off irrationally. St George flags would erupt like teenage acne at the first mention of the FIFA World Cup (or whatever bloody sporting event that England happened to be competing in at the time on the world stage) accompanied by a marked increase in hooting, cheering and shouting random obscenities down the street. When, invariably and without fail, this was then followed by England being promptly shot off the world stage by a superior sporting opponent, all signs of patriotism were flushed like a bad curry and everyone immediately forgot the words to 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.

I mentioned to England that it might be a good idea for us to visit other people for a while, just to get our heads back in the game together. England was sullen, noting that it hadn't actually had an empire in a few years, but it understood my decision and that if that was what it took for me to stay, it was prepared to make some sacrifices. I shopped around a little. Visited America. Spent some time in Germany, which I went back to a few times to really get a feel for the place. I came to the strange realisation that people in the streets of those countries were smiling, often for no apparent reason, but England assured me when I got back that this was the behavior of lunatics, terrorists and recidivists who couldn't be trusted at any cost. I had to maintain vigilance and squeal on my neighbors if I heard anything funny happening late at night, early in the morning or past four in the afternoon on Sunday.

When Tony Blair stepped down rather unceremoniously from office and paved the way for Gordon Brown to slop his unceremonious bulk into the Prime Minister's seat, I was apprehensive. I wasn't above pointing out that no democratic process I could mention had lead to this strange, grey man coming to power. I was assured that all that had happened, everything bad which had taken place over the last few years, it was all Tony's fault. He was a well-meaning villain, Gordon and England told me together, but he was not to be trusted. I should prepare a stake and be ready to tackle him in the street if he was to stray close to residential areas. At no cost was I to even mutter that I'd seen weapons of mass destruction, or Tony would be 'round my house to wreck the place looking for oil. Alright, I reasoned. His eyes are too close together and his smile makes him look like a stoat. I suppose everything could be Tony's fault and everything would be good from now on, right? People would smile in the streets, that'd be a nice change of pace.

No, no. If I was apprehensive before that was nothing compared to watching the poll results on the latest general election, my gall rising as it became obvious that for some bizzare reason the country had decided that the best way to haul itself out of a depression was to elect a pack of hyenas in blue ties, lead by a man who can best be described as a pillock. There are other terms, more offensive, but I can't any longer muster the energy to express my loathing for David Cameron with anything that takes longer to say than pillock. The observant may note that this is also roughly the amount of time it takes to say prick, knob, asshole, cunt, tossbag and willy, so you should feel free to substitute 'pillock' for whichever of those you feel most appropriate. England promised me again that everything would be okay, that I had strong, economically minded leaders who were prepared to make the hard choices to correct the mistakes that Labour had made while in power. Goodness, didn't you realise? It was all Labour's fault that we were in a mess to begin with. Gordon Brown, the grey man, was nudged from the Prime Minister's seat with little fanfare and England immediately set to pestering me about how fantastic the Basketfoot Club Ball Series was going to be this year.

I threw up my hands. On my desk there has always been a small red button under an innocuous plastic cover. It looked like something out of a nuclear submarine and that if you pressed it Abu Dhabi would immediately cease to exist in a brief, violent nuclear fire. Not so. Marked underneath it in simple white script was 'EJECT' and all I had to do was hit that button and I'd be catapulted back to New Zealand. An emergency extraction staged by my family (who will be portrayed in the movie of my life as the A-Team) to return to me to some semblance of normal life. I flicked up the little plastic cover, but I was apprehensive. This would mean travelling! This would mean quite literally relocating my life for the second time. Leaving behind my friends, familiar territory, starting from scratch.

David Cameron began his war on the EU, the Euro and the entire EEC for a 'safer, more progressive Britain' that presumably didn't include anyone that kept a beard, wore a turban or had been educated outside of Eton. I pushed the button.

Now I'm in Heathrow grappling with the internet access it's trying to offer me. I have to pay for it, of course, but I don't think that's really much of a bad thing. I have a fair few hours of flight to sit through and I'd like to have access to my Steam account in order to play some games while I'm in the air. My luck has already begun to turn. For reasons unknown it informs me dutifully that I cannot connect to the Steam network. "That's fine," I tell it, "just start in offline mode and let me access my game library." Don't be silly! You can't access offline mode without updating Steam online. Trying to wrangle the airport wifi access point I start to think I may as well try to recite the Emancipation Proclamation in reverse. In Dutch. It's okay, though, I shouldn't worry. I've got a couple of games on this venerable beast to keep me entertained. I'm sure, if I'm very careful and I ration my resources, I could even watch Star Trek for twenty three hours. I just can't get too excited or enjoy it too much or I'll want to watch the whole thing in one fell swoop and ruin my chances at entertainment. Don't you worry, though, gentle reader. I have access to Notepad, of course, so you are safe. You are provided for by my immense boredom.

I've got a camera, too. A little Sony Cyber-shot which claims to have megapixels (some) and shoot high-def video to a recommended memory card (not supplied). Here! My first picture with it.

[Actually, this is taking much too long to upload. It's just my ugly mug, anyway.]

For the moment I'm going to try and find something to eat that doesn't cost me the use of my kidneys. I'll update more throughout the trip, don't you worry, since I'm not sure that even I have the ability to play Panzer Corps for twenty three hours and find it entertaining the whole way through. I'm sure there's potential for a joke about the gravitas and severe nature of war, but... yeah, I'm wiped out. This is what you get, people, this is all I am at the moment. Do not just me too harshly for this. We're in for one long-ass ride.

Warhammer 40,000, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Destroy the Xenos Scum

In the grim darkness of the 41st Millenium there is only war.

Now, that's not true. There are births, deaths and marriages. There is drinking water. There's music. There's fast cars and bikini models. If you dare delve into the depths of the Black Library and come out clutching a dog-eared paperback that has clearly been loved by more than its fair share of owners, you'll find out all about what makes the universe tick behind that grand proclamation of there being only war. You'll barely regret it at all.

The premise of the universe behind Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 is a simple enough one to understand. Humanity is surrounded. We are by far one of the most numerous and prolific species in the galaxy, owing to the fact that it's fun to make people. People are the strength of the Imperium, and they have to be! The Immortal God-Emperor is sustained by the sacrifice of a thousand souls every single day so that he can be maintained in his deathless state seated on the Golden Throne which amplifies his immense psychic power. If he woke up, rest assured, he'd be so damned mad. He never wanted to be worshipped as a god! Humanity has become an ass-backwards totalitarian regime based on a few entirely faulty assumptions about the God-Emperor's plans for mankind and we're even getting that wrong. Dogma and superstition have replaced reason and hope, and it is by the countless billions that pour their blood into the grand machine of the Imperium that humanity endures another day rather than being snuffed out in a universe entirely inimical to us.

Everywhere there are enemies. Aliens from across the distant stars. Daemons bubbling forth from gaping rents in reality. Traitors, heretics and mutants amongst us. We are fucked. But while the forces of darkness gather like vultures around the limping, staggeringly vast Imperium of Mankind, there is hope.

In the early days of the Imperium, everything was great. We were scientists, scholars and artists. We went to the farthest reaches of the stars and came back, grinning and giving everyone back home a cheerful thumbs-up. Colonies were formed, distant holdings which pledged fealty to the distant memory of earth. Though they would eventually become entire empires that had forgotten Old Terra, the time would come again when the Emperor would tread the stars with his genetically manufactured sons, the Primarchs, at the head of the Great Crusade to retake, reclaim and rescue the sprawled colonies of humanity from the perils of the universe. Then? Well, I'll let a quote from Doctor Who suffice to answer that part.

"There was a war. Everybody lost."

The Imperium as it is today is a sprawling, bloated nightmare of beaurecratic process, vicious battles  for power amongst the privelidged elite and the ceaseless struggle amongst the literal tide of the lower classes for just another day clinging to life in an Imperium as without malice as compassion. I can not explain enough just how cool I think the Imperium is. Somehow, it is everything which is abhorrent to the modern mind. Unreasonable, vicious, blinkered by ignorance and unreasonable hatred. Simultaneously, they are the good guys! The great gears of the Imperium turn slowly and it is only by the constant vigilance of those amongst humanity's protectors that the worst the galaxy has to offer will be thrown back into the darkness each time they gather their strength to strike. It balances on a knife edge of utterly ridiculous satire and poignant parody of our own modern civilization with enemies that are straight out of a list of Saturday morning cartoon villains.

The Orks are a savage, barbaric race that seek only to test themselves in combat against whatever foe crosses their path. The Eldar are ancient starfarers that jealously protect what little remains of their fractured empire. The Tyranids are a living wave of chitin, blades and teeth that devour all before them and leave only bare rocks in their wake. The Necrons rise from their eons-long dormancy to begin the systematic extermination of sentient life in the galaxy. The Tau are an upstart race with a bright, golden philosophy of the Greater Good that harbours a shadowy secret. Chaos is the raw, primal enemy at the beating heart of the universe, the congealed emotion, ambition and spite of all thinking creatures throughout history.

It just so happens that the common man is not the only weapon in humanity's arsenal. Arrayed against this vast rogue's gallery of utter bastards that seem to populate the universe are humanity's greatest defenders, the Space Marines. Forged from ancient science long forgotten and now practiced as an art by those with the means to make men from the material of millenia-lost Primarchs, a single Space Marine is the match of a hundred mortal men. A demi-god in every sense, he is clad in the finest armour and given the mightiest weapons in humanity's arsenal. With just a thousand brother Marines to a Chapter and scant few of those in the Imperium, there is less than one Space Marine for every world in the Imperium.

But let me tell you about the really cool guys in the Imperium.

The Imperial Guard.

Take your average human being. Raise him in the nightmarish reality of the far future. Hand him a lasgun and what equates to 'Being a Guardsman for Dummies.' Now take him and set him against the various horrors that the universe has to throw at him.

That's it. Doesn't get any more complicated than that. This is a universe which is populated by the worst that a bunch of guys in the eighties could come up with. Ancient, armoured spirits in mechanical bodies that feel no pain and whose weapons can flense the flesh from your bones with a glancing blow. Enemies whose weapons fire nothing less vile and horrific than beetles that bore straight to your core, unerringly seeking out the heart, lungs and other vital organs, all whilst chewing furiously. Entities that are waiting for the chance to push their way forcibly between realities by punching a hole from the nightmarish realm of Chaos straight through the front of your head and exploding out of your body in a shower of gore and splintered bone!

Yeah! Here's your lasgun and your book. You go fuck 'em up, kid. Not good enough for you? Okay, here's a knife. Be thankful. Some guys don't even get the lasgun. Entire regiments of Imperial Guard, the vast fighting machine that forms the bulwark against the myriad enemies gathering at the Imperium's door, are sent into battle with the rags and sticks from their homeworlds. Which is where the crux of the matter comes to the fore. A regiment's homeworld determines a lot about their character. You think every world in the Imperium is like the earth that we know today? Of course not! You thought the bad guys were horrifying? There's such a thing as a death world. Catachan, amongst others, falls under this category. Catachan is a world on which there are giant enemy crabs (close enough) with claws that would crush a battletank. You will find heretic ants (they go for the soles!) that are minute enough to enter the bloodstream unnoticed, lay their eggs in your heart and let their larvae begin eating their way free of the host. Oh, and don't breathe the swamp gas. You don't want to know what that'll do to you...

What strikes me about the Imperium is, therefore, pretty simple. Take a look at the bad guys. They're big, they're mean and they're dangerous. They're meant to be. The Space Marines are big, mean and dangerous. They're meant to be! But in a universe intent on devouring humanity, crushing us entirely and removing all evidence of us from history, living in an Imperium which is as magnificently brutal as it is protective of mankind... it is people who are the ultimate badasses in the game of Warhammer 40,000. In a strange sort of way, that's what I like most about the game as well as the fluff and the history of the universe. At its very core, humanity is the strength of the Imperium. Fighting extinction tooth and nail.

In the grim darkness of the far future, we kick the shit out of anything that looks at us funny.

If you're curious, there's all sorts of places you can find out more. Hit up Google! Check out Steam for Dawn of War! Pick up Dark Heresy, the RPG from Fantasy Flight! Fight the future!

(I totally forgot what the point of this article was going to be when I started eating pizza about half way through, and cock it, I'm not one to edit a thing! So you get this rambling love letter to the future.)

Liking the Things you Love

Does anyone else know how that feels? There are things in the world that you just adore, you can't help it. There's something about the way that your mind perceives something which is different to everyone else. That's why we have different movies, different styles of music; you couldn't realise a single note being played over and over again because it doesn't appeal to everybody in the same way. That's part of why I don't understand people getting so worked up about what others enjoy, as if they're somehow less human for their taste in music, clothing or the like. Obviously, sometimes there are brands and labels which are appropriated for use as a badge of office to some culture or group that we might not agree with, but I'm not really looking to get into a grand debate over that. Let's just take taste at face value for argument's sake, shall we? Sometimes, it's really hard to like the things you love.

Yesterday I spoke about Star Trek Online, and I'm going to continue along a similar vein by giving you my thoughts on JJ Abrams' 2009 reboot, Star Trek (referred to henceforth as New Trek). I'll be quick and blunt about this. On the face of it, I thought it was a pile of steaming shit. I struggled to sit the entire way through that movie without pitching violence and outright hate at the screen, and I learned quickly that I was not alone in my nerdrage. Oh, the butthurt over that movie. What struck me the most was the fact it was made by a man who's gone on record as saying that Star Trek isn't enough like Star Wars. I wonder if we were to pay a visit to Mr Abrams' home, would we discover that he has systematically mutilated the ears of his dogs in order that they look more like cats? Would we take tea with him to find him serving plates of muffins mashed flat by a swift and brutal hand so that they'd more closely resemble cookies? This is not the man to be making Star Trek. This is a man to be given white wallpaper and a box of washable crayons. What clinched my annoyance with New Trek was the fact that one of the lines to promote was 'this is not your father's Star Trek.' Funny thing is, Mr Abrams, I rather liked that Star Trek, but I didn't know my father, so thanks for bringing that up, Abrams.

Let's not forget that this is the man behind Lost, a show which ended with the loudest 'Meh!' in history.

New Trek was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The most common rebuttal to this is that it's science fiction, so the facts don't matter, right? No. Shush. Go sit in the corner. Star Trek is not Star Wars; it's science fiction, not space opera. This is not remotely to say that I don't like Star Wars for what it is. Far from it, in fact! But they are not the same beast, not by a long shot.


Grumpy spoiler warning. In one part of the film we see that a black hole permits time travel. Neat! That's a handy thing to know, isn't it? Here I was thinking that I'd be crushed to a singularity. Then, later, we see a black hole artificially created in the same way hungrily munching through a gigantic starship. Wait, wait. You said... Never mind. Nero, the villain in the film, strands Spock (the proper Spock) on the planet Delta Vega to watch Vulcan being destroyed. Now, I don't remember precisely where Delta Vega is meant to be in relation to Vulcan, but I'm fairly certain they're not even in the same solar system off the top of my head. I might actually be wrong on this point, but I don't think I am. Even if I am, do you think we'd need a special effects extravaganza on par with New Trek's destruction of Vulcan if we were to make a movie which featured the destruction of Mars, shot from Earth? "I speak Romulan. All three dialects." I have sat next to a student of linguistics when that line was uttered; you will not hear rage as articulate and focussed, like a breathless beam of hate heaped on the altar of New Trek for such idiocy.

Red matter. Fucking red matter. JJ Abrams, you piss off. First Star Trek isn't enough like Star Wars, now you're writing Lost into the equation?! Your magic plot hole black hole sauce can fuck right off back to where it came from, m'laddo.

God, I couldn't help but love that movie.

What?

It was stupid shit. It was absolute tripe. In every way it was a clumsy, ham-fisted attempt on the name of Star Trek rather than a loving homage. I am super excited about the second one! I still can't sit through the movie in its entirety without humming the Imperial March or wondering if Prince Charles is having a nice morning. But I'm wired up wrong, I must be! I'm looking forward to a second film in this new take on the franchise! What kind of sick bastard am I?! Let me try to explain, and maybe you'll see things from a new perspective. I certainly did.

I couldn't explain to myself why I was still wanting to see more, even when what I was being shown was almost physically offensive, until I sat and had a chat with Simon (the Viking of World One Stage One Fame) who is, in many ways, a man that helps me channel my unfocused love/hate of something. I don't always agree with him on his take on a game or movie, but I enjoy our discussions, because he has a fairly reasoned approach to things. So I sat back while he explained to me why it was New Trek was not a blight on my DVD shelf (yes I fucking own the thing!) but a blessing, and the more I listened the more I found myself agreeing. Most of the movie we were given with New Trek felt like it was a kid in a costume, leaping up and shoutinging "I'm Star Trek!" The analogy isn't great, since what the kid was instead shouting was "I'm Star Trek, but not in a way you remember, I'm different! Let's play a different game!" In a lot of ways, including Leonard Nimoy's appearance, it felt like it was clinging to legitimacy by feeding us things we remembered rather than showing us a different take on the universe that we were familiar with. That might not be an entirely fair criticism to make of a movie which is the first in a breakaway timeline to a fifty year old franchise, but hey, that's the impression that I get.

But there were good things, too. There were, you stop laughing. Simon Pegg's Scottish accent is about as good as James Doohan's, so you in the peanut gallery can quit mentioning it. One of the things I hear in hushed tones from fans of Star Trek - and I mean the scary old neckbeards who're having these hushed discussions in shadowy corners as if expecting the Obsidian Order will swoop on them for their crime against the sacred Trek - is that the Big Three felt right. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban. Here were three guys which held the weight of the entire movie on their shoulders with every moment on screen. Here were three guys which weren't given the best script in the world to work with, but, I personally believe, had their hearts in the right places the whole time. I liked Pine's abrasive, headstrong prick of a young James T Kirk, a man who hasn't been tempered by his years in Starfleet. I liked Quinto's take on the impossible war of reason, logic and humanity in an ordered mind. Karl Urban as Leonard H McCoy, though? That man stole every scene he was in and with good reason.

Dammit, Jim!

What made the original series (TOS) and its movies was the dynamic between the three heroes of the Enterprise. We all have our favourite secondary characters, true enough, but the beating heart of Star Trek was Jim, Bones and Spock and, in a way that I think absolutely works with the beast they created, New Trek got them right. It's also got the distinction of being visually stunning. Point defence phasers? Probably about my favourite introduction to anything in Star Trek for a long while. The interior of the Enterprise has been compared to an Apple store ad nauseum, and to say nothing of those who didn't like the exterior redesign (Flare ALL the lenses!) but frankly, New Trek was incredibly pretty to look at. The battle between the Kelvin and the Narada? I got chills. I'm not kidding. It was spectacular.

So here's one last thought to put things into perspective. New Trek felt in many ways like dumb action without much of a plot, too much happening while it hoped to ride on being something new and shiny. Who couldn't say something similar of Star Trek: The 'Motionless' Picture? A movie which in many ways felt like too much of a plot with nothing really happening. What we got after that was Wrath of Khan, arguably one of the greatest science fiction action movies of all time and definitely my favourite amongst the entire back catalogue. Star Trek: Generations? A movie fighting to snatch the baton from its predecessors and break into a jog on the big screen rather than being scuppered by people's expectations of what a Star Trek movie ought to be? Then we got First Contact. Arguably another of the great science fiction action movies of its time and 'the one good Next Generation film.'

I hated JJ Abrams' Star Trek. I will be first in line to see the next adventure of this bright, young new crew and their gleaming white Enterprise. Go figure!

Thoughts on: Star Trek Online

This is a game I couldn't possibly be the right person to talk about. You remember me saying how I'm biased? There are three things I couldn't even remotely give you an unbiased review on if I tried. Doctor Who, Warhammer 40,000 and Star Trek.

Growing up, I was the stereotype of a Star Trek kid. I didn't have many friends and most of my spare time was spent entertaining flights of fancy where I was going boldly into the vast wilderness of split infinitives and visiting strange new cultures who didn't think that last week's thrilling episode of the latest man opera, WWF, was a suitable excuse to practice their pile drivers on an eager, young space cadet. You probably knew, avoided or happened to be someone like me! I didn't really mind that much. Even at that young age I still knew I was something of a caricature of the growing Star Trek fandom (Deep Space Nine was yet a twinkle in the distant sky!), but it didn't bother me, since the men and women that I saw on that show weren't just brave, perfect paragons of virtue! They were flawed, too. They had moments of weakness. They got angry and upset the same as I did, but they ploughed through adversity and came out on top of even the most hopeless situations. They were an ideal to aspire to, ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary by their deeds rather than some arbitrary super power.

So, explore the final frontier in a universe that I'd loved since I was a kid? There was no way that Star Trek Online wasn't going to appeal to me. It's funny, since if you listen to a few shows of World One Stage One prior to the game's release there's a real sort of hard cynicism toward the idea. It'll never be as good as you imagined it when you were a kid, right? I didn't want to, but I couldn't help feeling as though I was going to be let down by the release. But the release date came ever closer and Cryptic started taunting me with delicious information, tidbits and samples of the game that pushed all my buttons. They had me, the utter bastards! Screenshots and videos were eagerly devoured and before I knew it, I'd blown a rather significant portion of my money on a lifetime subscription to a game I hadn't even had a chance to play myself. But, I told myself, it just had to be good. It didn't have to be astounding, it didn't need to be Mass Effect! It just needed to look right, sound right and give me some new Star Trek that wasn't smeggin' Enterprise.

Oh, boy.

The game that we got at release? I don't even know how to describe it. It looked like Tonka and Micro Machines had teamed up to give us something that had Star Trek's name on it. The ships looked right and the character customization remains one of the best suites that I've seen in a game to date, let alone an MMO, but there was little else to remind me of the Star Trek that I'd grown up with and desperately wanted to be a part of. It just wasn't right. I looked at the pretty badge I'd been given in-game for my lifetime subscription and ground my teeth. Then, something miraculous happened. Something that I'd never seen in a game before. There's this marvellous habit that MMOs have, you see. They change! I didn't realise this, as Star Trek Online was actually the very first MMO that I'd really invested in save for a few abortive forays into World of Warcraft, which, for reasons I shan't touch on, stank of dookie. I wanted my goddamn space ships. I wanted phasers and Klingons and transporters and... and...

...oh, my god, what was this?! Development happened! The game got patched! It got better.

MY LITTLE MIND WAS TOTALLY BLOWN.


I'm pretty easily pleased. I'll admit that. Sometimes all you have to do is jangle the keys in front of my face and I'm entertained for hours. Anyone that knows me will tell stories of standing in abject fascination as I laugh at nothing in particular for minutes, since my brain is clearly not wired up in any kind of sensible fashion. My synapses fire like a box of shotgun ammo in a fire, and there is a strong chance that if you're standing nearby you'll get hit by that! Watch out. The upshot of this is that I'm always smiling at something, I find, since it doesn't take me long to find the next thing in this vast and bizzare universe that I find interesting. Star Trek Online managed to do this to me fairly quickly, and I was glad of it, since it was a game I wanted so badly to not suck.

This is a story which could continue for some time, iterating each of the features of the game in progress to the present day. I will spare you the details of each and every patch, content update and major overhaul, which I think to be a kindness. To make a long story short, the Star Trek Online that I know today is a game that's not only worth playing, but I'm glad I stuck with to this point. That lifetime subscription saw a couple of months of essentially 'free' play if you choose to look at the subscription model in that way, and with the game going free to play very soon I've been heavily involved in testing some of the content overhauls, updates and system updates that are going to go live when the game's released in its new model.

Shit the bed! An exclamation of surprise and stunned delight! No longer do you feel like it's you and a handful of officers versus the universe, as the duty officer system introduces a whole cast of NPCs to your vessel that can be sent on missions around the sector of space that you're visiting or given roles on the ship or as support to your ground teams that allow for some interesting passive abilities. I've heard it explained as a trading card game, which sells it a little short, but is essentially accurate. The rewards for these missions include experience, both for your self and your bridge officers that accompany you around the game, as well as other unique items. Of course, if you'd rather your entire crew stayed on your damn ship and did as they were told and you didn't have to tell them a thing to do other than to sit down, keep quiet and for god's sake stop poking Johnny's leg or you are going to turn this bloody cruiser around! Well, you can do that, too.

There's more, but the duty officer system is one of the major overhauls and content updates which I feel is probably my favourite inclusion to the game. Lore missions, an overhauled tutorial that actually explains 'shooter mode', enhanced things to do at Starfleet Academy which makes it both an active social hub and a neat place to pick up some fun little side quests while you're wanting a break from pewpew? This is all on top of a game that I'm enjoying immensely as it is at the moment, and soon you're going to be able to play that all for free?!


One day, when I have a time machine that isn't powered by wishes, I'm going to go back to fourteen year old me and have a word with him. I'll crouch down, lay my hand on his shoulder and say, "Troy, I'm not going to kidnap you and your kung fu really isn't impressive. Listen, you prick." Allowing him time to compose himself, I will continue: "In the future there will come a time when you - and your girlfriend! - are going to be playing Star Trek Online together. Not only will it not suck, but it'll actually be awesome! Protip: leave the toilet seat however the fuck you want to, since she totally understands that it shouldn't fall to you to both raise and lower the thing. Share the burden, my man."

I probably wouldn't tell him that, though. I'd probably go and use my twenty-something strength and size to pound some unsuspecting teenager into the dirt. Petty, but satisfying.

Star Trek Online. Boldly go.

And in the beginning!

I can't even pretend to understand how all the bits and pieces on this website work, so I'm going to struggle through them until I can at least understand the basics of posting. If you can see this, I've been successful! I can't help but laugh every time I see the word 'blog' written on this site. It's just ridiculous. Every time, I hear the Monarch proudly proclaiming, "That's right! I have been blogging!"

I'm getting used to the idea of being an entertainer. I've always been a clown, using humour to deflect attention either toward or away from myself as appropriate. Sometimes it's easier in life to be offensive with a joke than it is to own up to the truth of something, and I suspect I'm not the only one who's had experience in life that'd make someone think that way, but the fact of the matter is that we live in a world which is patently ridiculous. Believe what you like about your origins, where humanity came from, what created the universe; our existence is absolutely and totally implausible and that is hilarious to me.

It still bewilders me that people would find me entertaining, though. I'm used to Roger Rabbit's line of reasoning. Sometimes, laughter is the only weapon that you've got! But to hear and be reminded that there are people in the world that purposefully spend their time either reading what I've written or listening to me speak on subjects I hold absolutely no authority over for the sake of entertainment? That still astounds me. I'm flattered. I genuinely am! If you're here to read this then it means that you are, very likely, one of those people. I don't think I'll get around to saying thank you to each and every one of you personally, but in all honesty and seriousness, this is for you. You're lunatics, all of you, and I'm touched that you're here.

This, here, is my very first attempt at a blog. I looked at Tumblr and it bewildered me. I looked at Livejournal again and, frankly, if I wanted my experience online to be an endless stream of Frank the Goat in-jokes I'd work at a zoo (goats, though, horrific creatures with horns and devil eyes!). This is what you get until I can figure out something better. Or maybe this is just the best thing that we're both going to get, you and I. It's going to be rambling, incoherent, largely unrelated walls of text on life, the universe and everything... Isn't it? I actually have a couple of ideas in my head about where I'd like to go with this. Turns out, you see, that I have something of a penchant for telling people what I think. The internet is a strange place when it comes to opinion. People leap up on their digital soap boxes and decry their pet hates and laud their favourites as though the hand of God had touched them directly, which, if I'm perfectly honest, bothers me immensely. Inarticulate, screaming praise makes me want to jump into a septic tank and hide. Snide, superior criticism based on faulty logic and sneering distaste is equally irritating.

My promise to you is that I will never try to obfuscate fact with opinion! I am, however, often wrong. I am not unbiased! There are things I dislike for no reason other than having been in the wrong frame of mind when I first encountered them. I am stubborn! On occasion I will continue to dislike something despite all logical evidence to the contrary!

Don't get me started on World of Tanks, that shit can go die in a fire.

This first post isn't nearly as funny as I was planning that it would be, but I think that's largely necessary to help me set the tone and lay out what I've got in mind. I don't want you to come here expecting Shakespeare and walking away with Dan Brown. Fuck Dan Brown! Where was I?

Opinion. Humour. The occasional rant and review from a self-styled Kiwi Time Lord. Discoveries. Vitriol and bile! Fury unleashed through the written word! These things and more available for free, at no particular interval, from someone that really ought to know better.

Because, strangely enough, you asked for it. Be this on your head.