Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Not much to report. Yesterday saw the traditional Orangeing; Syriana this time (or Syrianna according to the tickets, or Syrianananananana according to my brother).

Not sure why some people have been so shocked by the film, or found it hard to understand. There have always been vested interests. There has always been interference and manipulation. Duplicity and hypocrisy were not invented by the Revenge of the Bush* administration.

Yes, fine, I got a little squeamish about torture (as did everyone else in the place; which is probably why it looks), but that's probably because in averting my eyes from the screen I looked down, and saw my own fingernails, thus reinforcing the message. Maybe that's why the zip scene in There's Something about Mary works so well as well.

Anyway, the film while good, simply wasn't that entertaining. I was very aware that I was watching it, but never really got drawn in. There's some good cinematography, some dodgy physics, a few good lines, but there was no great "why?". It just is. The people in it do what they think they need to do, but there's no real connection to how they got to that state. Munich, for at its mobile corpses and Mahabharating, gives more background and induces more reaction. It makes you think more, whereas Syriana is just live, as some people know it, continuing.

But while waiting in the surprisingly large queue for tickets, a clipboarded woman was running a survey on people using the Orange 2-for-1 offer. It's quite strange when she only pays attention to the person holding the phone, and so ends up asking how old my brother's "partner" is or how many times his guest has used Orange 241. But then we both replied in unison when asked if we'd come to see tonight film without the offer "Um, probably not, no". I get a free film out of it (which I can tolerate, as he's only spending a bit over £4 on me), and he gets a legitimate excuse to get out of the office, someone to see films with (who won't complain about his choice, or refuse to see it and doesn't have more pressing social demands) and a chance to see his brother.

He also gets to explore the menus of the two frequented eateries, due the third one not being open, and because while we've got a different table this time, we both try not to pick the same things. But it's all much of a muchness anyway, so we order different things, which come out looking fairly like what we weren't ordering and tasting only slightly different. But it's nice food, it beats Burger King induced illness (I may not get food poisoning every time I go, but everyone else with me does) and we may be on the verge of becoming known regulars. Plus I think I'm having prawn chow mein next time, if I stick the 3-down pattern, which saves embarrassingly slow decision making.

But one advantage of doing all this where we did, is at least the beggars are better quality, for example, last night's Irish guy. I have a very poor memory for jokes, so this is only a selection of his act:
- What do give a paedophile who has everything?
A bigger parish.
[Didn't laugh at that one, so he moved on].
- What do you call two Irish lesbians?
Gaelic.
[Laughed briefly at that one]
- What did the librarian say to the guy who asked for a self-help book on suicide?
Fuck off, you'll never bring it back.
[Drat, I laughed at that one, as did my brother. I guess we can't really get away with not giving him anything now]
- An Englishman, a Welshman, a Scotsman and three Irishmen go up to heaven. Standing outside the pearly gates, St Peter lets checks his list and lets the Englishman through. He lets the Welshman through. He checks again and lets the Scotsman through. But when he gets the Irishmen, he stops them and says: "It says here that you were all in the IRA. I'm sorry lads, but I can't let you through". To which they reply:
Canst ye no do a brother a fava? We'll only be in ten minutes.
[Wry smiles. Ok, so you can stop now, you had us at the library].
- What did God say to Osama bin Laden after the tsunami?
Beat that, you fucker.
[Ok, how much do you want?]

It's bizarre; swearing from an amusing Irishman is fine, but from Shelter's TCR chuggers it isn't. Admittedly they swear at everyone who ignores them, and the girl from the RNIB was far too unintentionally funny when she had a fit as a crowd split round here, each looking through her cheery smile. She ended up berating people with the immortal lines "Hello? I'm over here! Can't any of you see me? Are you blind or something?"

Someone really ought to have reminded her that it was Tuesday so it must be the Royal National Institute for Blind.

Ah, the joys of London life.

Anyhoo,

* Ok, I just checked and Revenge is Ep III, but as I haven't seen two or three, and haven't seen the originals since prior to the spawning of the Han Shot First campaign, I'm not that worried. Anyway I was thinking more of Jaws Whichever: The Revenge, of which I've seen part by accident. It was either that or Bush Now Redux, which I wasn't sure people would get. But as during the trailers pre-film, there was one for X-Men 3, to which my brother and I could only respond "There was a 2?", sequels aren't really my forte.

Oh, and the Koda Da Vinci looks dire (and looks more interesting in upside Cyrillic, but Blogger is Blogger), so hopefully that court case will scupper it. Vaguely connected; as my brother is moving, his flatmate was packing up his own stuff from the flat (and thus exposing my brother's chronic shortage of DVDs), and is apparently intending to jettison his collection of books. Now while I find the wanton destruction of books to be abhorrent, when it comes to rescuing the flatmate's Dan Brown collection, there's sacrilege and there's sacrilege.