The Glass Road

DUNLOP Corner Le mans Sarthe, julien.reboulet, 2011

It's been years since I watched Formula One. I stumbled across it at the age of nine one Sunday morning and saw Martin Brundle do a barrel-roll at the start of the 1996 Australian Grand Prix. From then on I tuned in every race weekend supporting Damon Hill's championship run against the evil Darth Vader Michael Schumacher, even getting up at 5am for final race in Japan. I stayed with the sport through to about 2002 when my interest waned concurrent with Schumacher's domination. Contrast that with my favourite season of 1999 when Schumacher was absent with injury for several months and it looked like (almost) anyone could win - even the scrappy underdogs, Jordan. I was rooting for Heinz-Harald Frentzen that year. The era was also the last days of the privateer teams before they were all seemingly bought up by factory teams, or at least their grid spots were to avoid the costly registration process with the FIA (hence, Tyrrell became BAR became Honda became Brawn GP became Mercedes GP within the space of twelve years). Of the private teams, only McLaren and Williams have survived largely because Mercedes and BMW, respectively, turned them into semi-factory teams in the recent past. Interestingly, 1999 was also the year of the first Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang International Circuit designed by one Herman Tilke.

We're Going To Be Friends

Part Two of Three.

Hvamsfjordhur signature image, January 2007

On the seventh anniversary of the founding of Star City I compiled and republished my memoirs on NationStates during what looked like the long drawn-out dying days of that game. I'm unable to speculate if that's the case with CyberNations today, on the seventh anniversary of Hvamsfjordhur, as I've never been as involved in the politics of the latter as in the former. That's largely due to the mechanics of the game and the location of its servers in the US which has always resulted in a certain American domination. As update was scheduled at midnight Central Standard Time it meant the command structures of the alliances were firmly entrenched in timezones that would result in all the action happening whilst I was in bed. NationStates never had that because it lacked any realtime interaction between nations.

Personally, CyberNations came to an early peak with the era of the Great Wars. Unlike the Citrus and Polar wars, the Great Wars pulled in almost every alliance into the conflict. Yet at the end of the first instalment of this series the global powers were at peace. Where alliances were not treatied, they were at least signatories of non-aggression pacts. So how was the stability shattered? How is it ever shattered?

The Exposition Song (Early Days)

Part One of Two.

Buffy Summers, 20th Century Fox

Sometimes you're just born at the right time, and sometimes not - like that quote I seem to cite too often about being too old for the sexual revolution. For me, it was more a case of international broadcasting rights delaying the UK terrestrial première of Buffy The Vampire Slayer just long enough to be relevant. Hard to believe it's fourteen years since Buffy débuted on BBC2 on December 30th 1998, when the US was already midway through Season 3. Yet, if it had been just two years earlier I don't think it would have resonated with me. It would be reasonable to assume age would have no bearing on the enjoyment of a fantasy-action show about a blonde Californian girl slaying vampires, but the subtext of the entire show was about being a teenager going through high school and I was in my first year of secondary school. Some people watched it for neither the pretext nor the subtext, but just to see Sarah Michelle Gellar. I didn't, because that's what Cruel Intentions was for. I actually missed the first two episodes, however after seeing the third episode on the 13th of January it became a religious part of my Wednesday nights. Sometimes I pity the teenagers today living in a world of abstinent, sparkling vampires that don't believe in sex before marriage. The great thing about inexpensive and compact home video (anything since VHS tape) is that a large part of the history of broadcast entertainment is available to the modern viewer. So someone please tie them down and break out the Buffy boxset.

We're Here Tonight, And That's Enough

The Danbo, Greenplasticamy, 2011

Christmas seems like a thousand days ago. Maybe upward of four thousand. That's the last time I thought Christmas was for me - that is; the last time I felt I was in the targeted demographic, to use the marketing phraseology.

Long gone are the days when I was out of bed at 5am. As are the days I was out of bed at 9am. My noon awakenings hold up the unwrapping each year. It seems so far flung from the golden age I remember, but that might explain the emergence of traditions.

Like a Rainy Day's Earth Won't Sit Still, Sliding on Down a Hill

Cropped screen capture of Jurassic Park (1993)

Christmas television isn't what it was in my day! I remember the terrestrial premières of blockbusters on BBC1 being a focal point of the day. In 1996 the film of the evening was Jurassic Park, an all time favourite as a consequence of being the first non-animation I can recall seeing as a child in the cinema. Now it's all Dreamworks computer-animations that have those annoying angular graphics that make it look like Pixar on the cheap. Bah. Humbug. Well thank the Lord for ITV2, as not a day goes by without them broadcasting Jurassic Park or Back to the Future. Actually, make that six days. I noticed they broadcast the exact same double bill (JP, The Bourne Identity) at the exact same time not a week later. I've well and truly lost count of how many times I've seen said dinosaur film, though some would say clearly too much as I did a special Christmas Day live one-man overdub of almost the entirety of the film (and got told to shut up). The fact that I know the film so well as to quote entire exchanges of dialogue made me aware of ITV2's clunky editing.

When The Levee Breaks

Part Two of Three.

The Liberation Flag of The Proletariat Coalition (November 2011)

No better time to pick up where I left off than the tenth anniversary of the founding of Star City. Hard to believe.

When I originally wrote my NationStates memoirs the game was entering its twilight period and it didn't look like the dawn would follow. Another site was then in ascendence and the former star site blew off its outer shell and began to contract. At the time, and on this blog, I voiced a hope that an exodus of players might at least alter the balance of power in some long-running conflicts rather than the game just become very very quiet. It looked like the latter transpired because for about five years my activity fell to the absolute minimum of logging in to prevent deletion. Of the more than a dozen puppets I maintained at the height of the game I now only have two functioning as informal ambassadors - Isla Pena in the Allied States of EuroIslanders and Dotjxraomm in the AntiCapitalist Alliance. Though it felt like centuries had passed, the game was declining after three years.

Music For Your Tape Recorder

How fitting that in a year when everything I think about seems to be from a decade ago the average year of release for the below is (rounded up) 2002. Once again, though, the tracks are skewed toward the first half of the year as one album has truly dominated since then, thus I've stuck with 2011's format.

A couple of years back I said there was always a drive toward finding new material and never giving something a second chance and an opportunity to grow on me. Three years ago I bought Be Your Own Pet's two albums, but they never really meshed, though Bicycle survived on my iPod all that time until I decided to offer them a make or break chance to sit alongside the other compact discs. Well now they do. Coincidentally the other album I gave a second chance was Wire's 154 which I obtained that same summer three years ago. Perhaps I hadn't been in the right mood at the time.