On the 4th of January, I posted my New Year’s Resolutions for 2023. Here is my third short update, two months later (check out update one here and update two here).
I need to lose 50lbs. Simple as that. During Covid, I became the fattest I’ve ever been. Not acceptable. Current weight: 17st 12lb (250lb). Goal weight by Summer: 14st 5lb (201lb).
Me (04/01/2023)
Well, a consistent regimes of (1) jogging every day, and (2) junk food portion control, mean my current weight is now 16st 1lb (225lb). That is solid progress. Let’s keep it up!
Wake up calls
I have now reached and gone beyond a highly significant milestone for me, namely, 16st 2lb. Here’s the story of why that weight is so psychologically important for me.
When I was about 27 years old, I had let myself slip into a weight-based funk; too many beers, too many pies, and I’d stopped running. I remember it clearly: I was in Malta on holiday, and I went past a chemist’s; it was closed, but it had a coin-operated height-weight machine outside it. Being a former colony, Malta uses/used our British system of weights and measures. So I stepped on the machine. It rang up 16st 2lb. I had never weighed so much in my life. I turned to see my face in the reflection in the window; I looked truly bloated and grotesque. And memories of being a small boy and asking my then rather overweight Dad how much he weighed rang around my head. “Just over sixteen stone”, he said. I had never seen my Dad so fat, now nor me. It was a wake up call, and when I got back from holiday I got real. I got back into exercise and got back into shape.
Years of good habits followed, but eventually I would sink into a funk again, partly due to mental health problems caused or exacerbated by rather trying life circumstances. And here we are today. But I’m back on track, and I mean it.
On the 4th of January, I posted my New Year’s Resolutions for 2023. Here is my second short update, two months later (check out update one here).
I need to lose 50lbs. Simple as that. During Covid, I became the fattest I’ve ever been. Not acceptable. Current weight: 17st 12lb (250lb). Goal weight by Summer: 14st 5lb (201lb).
Me (04/01/2023)
Well, a consistent regimes of (1) jogging every day, and (2) junk food portion control, mean my current weight is now 16st 6lb (230lb). That is solid progress. Let’s keep it up!
It also counts as another milestone achieved. To those who don’t know the British system of weights, we measure things in stone and pounds. There are fourteen pounds to a stone. Therefore, each seven-pound interval represents a milestone, namely, half a stone. Having now dipped below 16st 7lb, I have arrived at and gone beyond that milestone. Next stop? 16st 2lb. Why is this odd weight highly significant for me? Well, let’s find out in the next post — where I will have reached that target.
I need to lose 50lbs. Simple as that. During Covid, I became the fattest I’ve ever been. Not acceptable. Current weight: 17st 12lb (250lb). Goal weight by Summer: 14st 5lb (201lb).
Me (04/01/2023)
Well, a consistent regimes of (1) jogging every day, and (2) junk food portion control, mean my current weight is now 16st 10lb (234lb). That is a great start. Let’s keep it up!
I need to lose 50lbs. Simple as that. During Covid, I became the fattest I’ve ever been. Not acceptable. Current weight: 17st 12lb (250lb). Goal weight by the Summer: 14st 5lb (201lb).
Finish editing my first poetry collection and get it ready for self-publication.
Enter some poetry competitions.
Carry on with my language learning programme (Basque) and meet my goals in it (not specified here to avoid a long post).
Get back on the horse with regards my Spanish. Specifically, get back to practising my speaking using Glossika every day and watching Spanish TV every day. Sit a B2 practice test around the Summer to see how I’m getting on.
That’s it.
These things are important to me. I want to achieve them. These are SMART goals (some details left out to keep the post short) but with in-built flexibility.
Las Elegidas (‘The Chosen Ones’) follows a fourteen year old who gets kidnapped into sexual slavery by her boyfriend who is himself under the duress of his people-trafficking older brother and father. The boyfriend begs his father but is presented with a stark choice: his girlfriend will be released if he finds another girl to fill her space. So we spend half the film with him seducing another girl, ultimately successfully. His girlfriend is changed forever, sin embargo, and is “released” but only to live with the family and under their supervision at all times.
The film was moving. The sex scenes were disturbingly shot, but featured no actual sex. But this made it all the more disturbing as the sex is in our minds.
However, the film ends rather abruptly. Just as a plotline develops about one of the patrons of the brothel being an undercover would-be liberator of the girls, credits roll.
totally falls apart, our main players [are] totally incapable
A policeman carries around the pain of the mysterious and unsolved disappearance of her best friend from years before when they were on a teenage night out together. But when she finally decides to reopen the case and investigate it herself, she soon finds herself in danger.
Perdida is a mystery crime thriller with some interesting twists and turns, although you can see one of the main twists coming a mile away. Sadly, the just-about-passable acting totally falls apart, our main players totally incapable of even trying to react normally at several crucial moments; indeed, there is no reaction at all at emotional pay-offs. This weird disjunction between what is happening and the performance of the actors is vaguely confusing and certainly ruins the film’s high points.
this post was originally published in 2018, hence the lack of in-text reference to Star Trek: Picard
It’s truly the Great Aunty Edith of the Star Trek family
I’m a big StarTrek fan. So I’ve been massively excited by the new StarTrek TV series, Discovery, and couldn’t wait to see the first episode on Netflix! Will it be a hit or a flop? Only time will tell, though most of my non-Trek friends are surprised to hear there’s a new series. Either way, it raises the question: which Star Trek series is best?
The Original Series (1966-1969)
Okay, so I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Therefore, this show was always hopelessly dated for me. I like the themes, and I am thankful it gave us the Trek franchise, and yes, some of the films featuring the original cast were pretty good. But sorry: the series is naff and painful. It’s truly the Great Aunty Edith of the Star Trek family; there’s no doubting the depth of affection for her, we just don’t want to ever see her again because she is an out-of-date embarrassment.
The Next Generation (1987-1994)
So this is what got me into Trek. I saw my first episode around 1995. To today’s kids, this must look as naff and dated at the original series looked to me when I was a kid (The Original Series was 25-ish years old when I got into The Next Generation, and The Next Generation is now about 25 years old itself). Asides from the early episodes which were very campy and involved soon to be jettisoned stuff like Troy’s bizarre accent and Picard’s peculiar Frenchness, the series was fairly solid with a lot of great episodes.
Deep Space Nine (1993-1999)
For me, this is the best Trek by far. It’s where the franchise decided to bravely seek out new worlds that Star Trek could go. It straddles the old world of rose-tinted optimism and 22 episode seasons of random adventures, and the new post-Battlestar Galactica world of tense, tightly plotted, ten episode seasons, where the world is shades of grey, not a simple good versus evil. From the start of the Dominion War arc, DS9 also foresaw the tight central plot arc and went to dark places not explored before or since in Trek.
Voyager (1995-2001)
Too much, too soon. Next Gen was just winding up, and DS9 had barely begun let alone found its groove. Voyager would have benefitted from a couple of extra years development. Yes, the concept was good: a squabbling crew thrown together on a Federation starship hurled roughly 70 years from home. A female captain was much appreciated. And the show features one of my favourite Trek characters of all time: the Doctor, who was the Emergency Medical Holographic backup program which was forced to run full-time when the actual doctor got killed. A great spin on the non-human coming to terms with and trying to become human (see Data in Next Gen, Odo in DS9). Sadly, most characters were crap, and it took about four years to even get going.
Enterprise (2001-2005)
Brilliant costume and set design, a real gritty and primitive edge, wonderful developments of the early Federation: earth is barely united, and the Vulcans are very much senior partners. Great characters, great acting. Yes, it also took a while to get going. Not helped by the name, “Enterprise” as opposed to “Star Trek: Enterprise”, even the program-makers realised their error and re-inserted the “Star Trek” branding in the fourth season. But by then the damage was done. Premature cancellation in season four makes this show a somewhat frustrating, what-could-have-been.
Discovery (2017-??)
Hardly fair to judge it on the first season alone. And Star Trek is notorious for slow-starting series which only gear up after a few seasons. None-the-less, Discovery has great design and some lovely characters. There were some shocking twists, yet never for the sake of it. I can’t say it was perfect. I think 7/10 is a fair rating. Never-the-less, this might be the best first season of a Trek ever.
A psychiatrist, who suffered a violent attack by one of her disturbed patients, tries to piece her life back together by finding new meaning — helping a new patient, but he has his own dark history to contend with. But is this case too much too soon for our Dr. Jane Mathis?
Clinical has two stories running in parallel, that of the horrifying attack Dr. Jane Mathis (Vinessa Shaw) suffered at the hands of her patient Nora (India Eisley), and that of her current patient Alex (Kevin Rahm) who suffered horrific disfigurement during one awful night. This structure works well.
Dr. Jane Mathis’ boyfriend Miles isn’t particularly believably played by Aaron Stanford. Sure, Stanford has little screen time and few lines to work with, but I never bought into their relationship; Vinessa Shaw, for her part, gives a believable performance. In fact, Miles and best friend Clara (Sydney Tamiia Poitier) seem to be there just to make up the numbers, add tension, help plot points and just, because, ya know, we need to have a boyfriend and bestfriend in these type of films to be menaced by murder and / or actually murdered. A bit tacked-on and underdeveloped.
A little bit lazy in places — shrink who’s on drugs herself, lots of glasses of wine, etc. — and underdeveloped in others — why should we even care about the fates of her boyfriend and best friend? — this film is nonetheless riveting and tense throughout. The ultimate assessment of whether this film makes the cut or not really depends on your opinion of the two parallel storylines, that of Nora and Alex, and the interrelation between these plot threads. If you feel that the two threads work nicely together, then you’ll like this film; if you feel that the two threads have been stuck together, then you’ll feel a bit frustrated. As for me, I think it all works quite well.
Are you a Star Trek or a Star Wars fan? Me, I always say Trek. And it’s true. But actually, my favourite Star of all is, and I am kind of embarrassed to say it: Gate. Yes, Stargate is my favourite Sci-fi franchise.
What I crave, in these imagination-blanched days of reboots, is a STARGATE REBOOT!!!
The concept: the Stargate franchise as it is, is in the old, pre-Battlestar Galactica reboot days. Twenty plus episodes, many filler eps, no real driving episode-to-episode narrative. So let’s modernise it and make it fit current TV norms.
Darker tone.
10 episodes a season.
One continuous narrative throughout.
Reboot in an alternative universe style, so we don’t even need the same characters (but we can keep them if we want).
Keep it to the original Egyptian + Sumerian/Babylonian (c.3000BC) mythologies. Forget all this Greek and Norse rubbish that they used to pad the shows out with.
Here are some season idea outlines. This may not make any sense to you if you’re not a fan of the TV shows or the film.
Season 1: mostly follows the original 1994 StargÅte film. They discover the gate, try to crack the code, travel to Abydos, hide out, get in trouble, they make Ra leave Abydos (not destroyed as in the film?), “Tealc”-type character introduced in this season which happens in Episode 1 of Stargate: SG1 the series. Basically, series one is the discovery of the gate and the struggle against and removal of Ra from Abydos.
Season 2: where SG1 starts but darker. Abydos in chaos as they can’t rule themselves, politically dark, Ra going to return, many people want him, Abydonians realise the gate can take them to other worlds and how to do it, earth starts to lose interest in Abydos, team kills Ra. In short: The Return of Ra.
Season 3: fall out on earth of destroying Ra and disobeying orders, politics, another system lord (but not “Apophis”) takes over Abydos, we hear invasion launched against earth, desperately search worlds for weapons and technology or allies to fight goa’uld, by end of season ships enter our solar system. In short: the Empire Strikes Back
Season 4: Not sure. But I reckon: we destroy Goa’uld ship, suspiciously easily; actually, Goa’uld ship was a ruse to distract as goa’uld symbiotes are landed on earth and a facility is set up on earth secretly so the goa’uld can take over several world leaders and government to act as a fifth column to pave way for actual invasion. Perhaps this becomes clear by last episode. In short: The First Wave.
Season 5: … you probably have given up reading this by now, so I’ll call this fangasm to an end.
Lost Girls is based on the disturbing true case of the Long Island Serial Killer, where upwards of 16 young ladies, all sex workers, were murdered and buried in a field behind a gated community. The killer has yet to be identified. The film focuses on the story of Shannan Gilbert whose disappearance and subsequent police search led to the gruesome discovery of this string of dead bodies.
Nobody wanted to listen, but Shannon’s mother, Mari (Amy Ryan), was tenacious and made it happen. Deeply flawed individuals. Amazing acting even from those with very few lines. The casting was fantastic.
The obligatory credits sequence where we see the real people involved was particularly grisly and gruesome, especially when the fate of the surviving members of the family is revealed.
I don’t want to overegg this sell. Just watch the film. Fans of crime, thriller, documentary, and true stories will all love this deeply disturbing tale that will surely haunt you weeks later.
The Doggerelizer 
