Diabolical Fly Plots

I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that no Menaces, Flying, Scuttling or otherwise (touch wood) have been bothering us lately. Also, we discovered that it hasn’t been just us dealing with this cruel and unusual foreign bug invasion either; Ben speaks to Liam (his housemate from last year) most evenings because Liam is also on placement but in Germany, where they speak an even stranger language than the one they speak here. I overheard the following Skype conversation whilst making the dinner last night:
Liam: “I’ve got really good at swatting gnats. Flies too – it’s got to the point where I can sneak up on one (they’re really stupid), take off my top and WHIP it. I got one so good that it turned into goop.”
Ben considered this statement and said:
“Did you put your top back on afterwards?”
Liam laughed proudly.
“Yep.”

I can see where he’s coming from. Fly goop is the equivalent of a badge of honour in this war against the insect world. What really stood out was the inclusion of that aside; ‘they’re really stupid’, as though somewhere, sometime, Liam has encountered CLEVER flies. Flies that don’t just want to walk on poop and then on food. Flies that plan and scheme and connive in order to carry out some diabolical fly-plot.

Be afraid.

We also watched another film last night – Hellboy 2. Now, I was of the opinion that Hellboy the First was pretty bad, but Ben wanted to watch the sequel and I was interested in seeing the special effects and cool monsters. It was so dull, that half way through we both managed to get engrossed in a game of Spider Solitaire on my laptop (18 games won in a row. We’ve got a rule that states no game can ever be lost. Rewind right back to the start if you have to, but never give up. Strict adherence to this rule explains why I actually spent roughly two hours on a single game this morning. That’s two hours of my life I’ll never see again. Still, at least I wasn’t watching Hellboy.) There was only one bit that was worth watching – a bit that my sister had already mentioned, in the context of ‘There’s only one bit that’s worth watching’, and she was right. What really bugged Ben and I was the accent of a ‘German’ robot/incorporeal psychic energy thing. It was, even taking John Malkovich’s appalling French accent in Johnny English into consideration, the worst attempt at a foreign accent ever. As usual, as with any film we watch, I checked IMDb to see if there was any interesting trivia that I could impress Ben with. I discovered the following:

Del Toro had cast an actual, proper, born in Germany German voice actor to do the voice

He was not happy with the end result (was it the authenticity he had a problem with, perhaps?)

He cast, instead of this actual, proper, born in Germany German voice actor, SETH MACFARLANE.

Yeah, the guy who does Family Guy. Yes, he is very talented. But he is not German.

It gets better (worse?).

Seth Macfarlane based his German accent – wait, more emphasis – Seth Macfarlane BASED his GERMAN ACCENT on none other than JEREMY IRONS in DIE HARD!! He was doing an impression of a British man doing an impression of a German! Why?! For the love of God, why? If it had to be Seth MacFarlene, couldn’t he at least have tried to do an impression of a GERMAN? Would it have been so hard? He could have called up the guy who originally had the part - he probably still knows the lines, it’s not like any of them were unpredictable.

Moving on.

Whilst we were eating dinner last night, Ben was hit with sudden inspiration
“You could be really postmodern and write a blog on writing your blog.”He paused thoughtfully in order to construct a paragraph that he thinks sums up my blog entries thus far.
“You could put ‘Today I was writing in my blog and I wrote yeah, whatever, it’s cool and stuff.’” He looked at me helpfully, pleased with his contribution.

I think it’s quite safe to say that I probably won’t be writing a blog on writing my blog any time in the near (or far) future.