The camping life

Yes I am tent-blogging. OK not really, but I have been spending my days waking at six to roll up my mattress and fold down my canvass dwelling. Now I sit in a Namibian bakery, which is a less unconventional locus of the blog, granted, but still fun, especially with that cinammon smell wafting by.

Smell it?
mmm.

Very cool country, and ther wildlife of the savannah has a familiar yet-alien quality - their are recognisable components of many animals - the bull in the wildebeest, the fox in the jackal, the HGV in the elephant - yet twisted in unspeakably cool ways. I've got to see sprinbok stotting, and plenty of exciting carcasses, along with the obligatory bestial-copro moments. Nice. Perhaps I will paraglide tomorrow.

In essence, life is swell. Catch you in blighty, most likely.

... ...

No title, as I'm wholly contrite about my lack of action. I promised you neuromarketing! Sorry, folks, but tomorrow has been a Vitalstatistix kind of phenomena recently. Hiatus will no doubt continue, as I will be going away in a week: there are reasons, namely getting involved in this unspeaking cool project, trying to mutate the thoughts on evo-psych and politics into a coherent article, and busy workness.

However, when important things rear their head, I always step up, so consider this your friendly link to an important piece of research on scary films. Needless to say, I was underimpressed:

Researchers spent two weeks watching horror films like The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs in pursuit of the formula.

Two weeks? Fuck off. Thats a couple of popcorn marathons (and I bet they weren't watching 14 hours a day, either). I have severe suspicions about their sampling methods - not the quantity (I admit, you could watch a fair heft of films in two weeks to give a moderate sample) so much as representativeness. If they just took visible movies that made it to the mainstream, they'd certainly miss all the international horror (with very different takes on fear), low key burners like Paperhouse (I assume to god they included Jacobs Ladder, but even that ain't guaranteed) - and what about this shocker?

Stefan.

Stefan!!!


(apologies to those whose adolescence was not incomprehensively stricken by exposure to a rubber dinosaur and a grown man acting as a child. And not in a Jack kinda way.)