Pretty good play. Two eccentric slackers who hang out behind some coffee shop befriend a teenager who works there. Some learning ensues, but the play managed to refrain from getting too sentimental. Clever script that raised quite a few laughs, especially from the well-observed novel written by one of the characters.

Good cast. Crook did a surprisingly intense performance, but didn't overshadow Ralf Little who has a slightly bigger role.

Overall, very good play, well balanced

Review, review, review, review, review, review.

What I'm Watching
Saw Enter the Void at the cinema. Art-house movie in which a young American in Tokyo watches events before and after his death.

Definitely a mixed bag. The first 25 minutes or so is astonishing, filmed from the pov of the main character, it's incredibly intense and involving.

After that though the film starts to get more mixed There's some great stuff in there. The shooting style is terrific, with great swooping shots with CGI seamlessly merged with film. Parts are filmed with tilt-shift-like narrow depth of field with Tokyo looking toylike There are some good moments, and the ex-pat drug-dealing is observed with painful accuracy.

However, it gets a bit self-indulgent. A lot of the scenes drag on too long, and there's a lot of pointless repetition. Also the sex scenes are more realistic than you'd expect in a cinema, and there was one scene in particular I could have done without seeing, especially from three rows back.

Overall though, glad I went to see it, it's certainly something a big different. Cool opening credits anyway.

Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, Salon, NY Times reviews. Rottentomatoes, trailer.

What I'm Listening To
Latest TTC course was Understanding the Human Factor: Life and Its Impact, about the history of domestication of plants and animals, by Gary A. Sojka. Well presented: Sojka is a biologist who also raises rare breeds as a practical farmer, so he's able to come at it from various angles.

However, it did take me longer than usual to get through this course as I kept putting it aside. While it's somewhat interesting, I didn't find the subject itself particularly gripping.

The ending did get a bit more interesting as he went into the problems of modern large-scale agribusiness from a very informed perspective.

Apparently farmed shellfish has relatively little environmental impact, so that's something.

Me
Visiting the parents this weekend, and next weekend.

My father's had more health problems in hospital. He's had yet another fall, in the hospital this time, and is having a scan. Also the second arm operation has left him with an infection: they're blasting him with two antibiotics for it

Had a bit of a scare when my mother phoned me in tears because he didn't recognize her on a visit. He has relatively early dementia and the infection apparently aggravated it: this has never happened before. Apparently he seemed much better on subsequent visits though.

Web
Socioeconomics. Where child benefit goes (via) Fear of employment law damages business.

Sci/Tech. Stuxnet Q&A Research into forming habits. Exoskeleton prosthetic legs, video. Google Translate does Latin.

Game. Flabby physics.

Politics. Graph of terror alerts against elections, more. Man jailed for four months for not giving police his password. Nazi nudging ballot paper.

News. BBC to adapt "The Man in the High Castle" (via).

Pics. Food photography. Dictators' jets. Postcards from London's future. Updated XKCD online communities map. Old 4WD. Food photograph setups (via). Nuclear tests (via).

Video. Kittens on a roomba. Concealed weapons.

Articles. Mark Twain observes a telephone conversation (via). Fred Pohl on book collaborations. Shakespeare is German. Aristotle didn't know anything about theatre. Escalators.