Andy's Blog

"____ do not work that way!" Often quoted while watching bad movies, or just in general.

"Yeah, boys!" This is not so much weird as momentarily odd, and as a pop culture reference it falls short of being recognizable or even particularly unique by a long way. It is a weird thing I say, however, and it has its origins in a particular passage from Dave Stone's Sky Pirates! , a passage summarising the events of the previous book in the series, introducing the two new companions for readers who may be less than completists:   And when the time-travelling alien, the Doctor, had offered to take them along with him in his ship - for want of a better word - Cwej's instant and automatic reaction had been: 'What, travel the whole vast panoply of space and time, righting what once went wrong and confronting hideous beings of slithering, inutterable and unmitigated evil on their home turf? Yeah, boys!' While Detective Adjudicator Roslyn Forrester stood somewhere in the background with a hand over her eyes. It may itself be a pop culture reference, possi

This is a post I've been sitting on since before Christmas. Shortly before Christmas, in fact, as I browsed the various gift sections that pop up in our department stores in the run-up to the festive period. I'm terrible at shopping for gifts. My eye is inevitably drawn towards things related to my own interests - sometimes things I would like to own myself, but more often simply merchandise attached to properties in which I am invested, because it is nice to see things you love doing well. So this year I noticed this: A smart box for a T-shirt featuring the Justice League! Not bad, quite dynamic art, though it's odd to see Batman smiling, and of course they're the pre-New-52 character designs, but that's sort of expected for a mainstream product, they have to go with the iconic, public-consciousness images rather than whatever they happen to be wearing this year. After all, these are men who - - men - - white men who - - wait.

I have just played through Murdered: Soul Suspect (it was dirt cheap on Steam). I enjoyed it, though at the same time find little to disagree with in the Zero Punctuation review : The "combat" was shoehorned in, the "detective" work tended to be either overly simplistic or hopelessly obscure, and the reliance on scripting was sometimes obnoxious (clues you can't interact with until you've asked the right question, guards that ignore your presence because you've technically "passed" their guard challenge). I suspect I allowed myself to immerse in the game a little more than Yahtzee did - an easy trap when you're consciously reviewing a game - as I did find the demon-wedgie sequenes more frightening than tedious. Even though I told myself there was no consequence for failure and it wasn't really that challenging I still found my pulse quicken and movements become frantic whenever they spotted me. I'd say Airtight hit the right mark

"I stand by my statement." There's a moment early in the 1966 Batman movie where Batman's giving a press conference (yes). He deflects someone's question and somebody calls him on it, and he responds with this cleverer-than-thou rejoinder. After consulting the Internet I find the full exchange is thus: REPORTER: “A trans-Atlantic yacht approaching the city simply disappeared.” BATMAN: “Nonsense. How could a yacht simply disappear?” REPORTER: “You mean it isn’t true?” BATMAN: “I stand on my answer.” As so often with these Things I Say I find I have misremembered, but the spirit of the phrase remains: If you look at what I said,  rather than what you heard,  you will see that I knew exactly what I was saying. In this case Batman is not denying the disappearance of the yacht, but rather asserting that it could not have been a simple matter. My favourite thing about the scene, though, is a disguised Catwoman asking him to remove his mask for photos, as tho