More reflections on RoboCop (aka Paul Verhoeven is awesome, part three of eleventy billion multiplied by the square root of the distance between where I sit and Proxima Centaurii)

So after I published my previous writing about the subject of the most awesome film that has ever been made (and likely will be made, at least during my lifetime), I began to think to myself. I have really not begun to describe why it is so incredibly, utterly, mind-blowingly awesome, at least not on a level that fans can appreciate.

Predator 2, a study in how to gracefully kick oneself in the groin

In the mid-to-late 1980s, a joke was circulating around Hollywood that the only person Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone‘s first and arguably most interesting stock character, had not fought yet was E.T.. This prompted a couple of screenwriters to hammer out a “treatment” for a film in which a type more commensurate with Rambo would fight with an alien creature of similar disposition. Contracts were exchanged, money was allocated, stars were solicited, and in 1987 the result was released to theatres as Predator.

Internet designers nowadays: eat me. Sincerely…

When I think back to the mid-to-late 1990s, when I first started taking my tentative steps onto this whole new, “exciting” medium called the Internet, I think of all the promises that were made and the promise the medium was reputed to hold. And in those days, it did promise a lot that was exciting to a technology-dreaming boy like myself. But promises are like wishes. Put one in one hand, then shit in the other hand. See which one fills up first. And never has there been a better example of this truism than the Internet after the commercialists realised that it was not just some “geek” trend, that it was not going to just go away whilst they ignored it, and that it posed a real, credible threat to them. And since then, they have been working overtime to try and negate what made, and to a degree still makes, the Internet a far better medium for all concerned.

Now, you have probably noticed that I inserted a capture of what I see when I load this journal in one of the web browsers on my computer. It is not for vanity reasons. For one thing, I am not that vain. For another, I do not like to use graphics in these things unless it is for an actual purpose. And if you have even the slightest interest in design, one glance at the image I have placed near this paragraph should be able to tell you what that purpose is.