Springy Stuff

Ahh, spring.

You spend all winter shuttered away. There's maybe nine hours of light in the day. It's dark. It's cold. It's wet. You don't go outside much. Illnesses travel around the community. Then suddenly, spring.

My children have gone from being near-catatonic (relatively speaking) to unstoppable balls of irritating activity. Leave them alone for ten minutes and they start wrestling, or playing soccer, or hurling javelins... and this is bad, because after the winter, they have the habit of being in the goddam house, which is really no place for javelin tournaments. (The cats hate it.)

Unfortunately, spring is also about the dodgiest of dodgy weather. Sunshine to rain to hail to sunshine again in the space of an hour. Or it can go the whole day, overcast and threatening, but the only rain you get is one or two brief showers which somehow unnaturally coincide with your every effort to send the children outside.

I do have a secret weapon, of course. When I need rain, I put the clean laundry on the line outside. When I need to send the kids outside, the laundry goes into the electrical-bill-inflating clothes-dryer. It's not a perfect system, but you'd only be surprised at how well it works if you were some kind of a believer in the dark magic of statistics, rather than a person like myself, who understands the innate, and personally-directed malice of the universe.

Today is one of those threateningly grey days. The weather radar map is inconclusive. The real question for the day is this: how much more Wii bowling with my kids can I withstand? 

It's been fun, I admit. For some reason, they've rediscovered Wii Sports, and we've been rebuilding our stock of little Mii avatars, since our old lot expired with the original Wii machine. We've built "The Question", the no-face, low-power superhero from DC comics. We've built a cyclops. A dinosaur-headed guy. A guy with a face that looks surprisingly like a dog's. We've build Jesus, Adolf Hitler, and Osama Bin Laden. We've also built a Samuel L Jackson avatar, and named him "Nick Furry". (He has two eyes, unfortunately. What was wrong with the designers of the Wii? Why can't you get a decent range of hats, eye-patches, fangs, whiskers, bizarre ears and excitingly gonzo hair for your little Mii avatars? This is unacceptable!)

Nevertheless, we're chafing a little.

Yesterday we took off; all of us. We drove across to Latrobe, and the Reliquaire -- that store of wonders. It was... damaging, as always. The Mau-mau now possesses a particularly foofy new dress in which to go to the ballet with her mother tonight. Genghis has a big brass padlock and key of antique style, and a freestanding cardboard cut-out Dalek nearly two metres tall. (I put it next to his bed last night while he slept. It was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes this morning. I felt good about that.) And Jake has a lovely nib pen set, complete with inkwell, ink, multiple nibs, and a fine leatherbound journal in which to write.

We tried out a new restaurant on our way home through Launceston, on the recommendation of my friend the second-hand bookstore owner. Free plug for My Bookshop right here: this place is everything a second-hand bookstore should be. It's got good turnover, interesting stock, and pleasantly crowded premises. Best of all, the proprietor loves books and everything to do with them, and she's a big reader in speculative fiction. She's also articulate, funny, and loves nothing more than a chat about whatever it is either of us happens to be reading at the time. I try to get in there a couple times a month, and every now and again, I drop by with an embarrasingly large drop-box of books that have become surplus to requirements. She never complains.

Anyhow, it was the proprietor of said bookstore who directed me to Thai Buddha (great name!) in Charles St. I'm always interested in trying a Thai place, and this one is definitely the goods. It's a small place in a charming old building, but it's scrupulously clean, light and airy. The people who run it are lovely -- friendly and helpful without being in your face. Prices are good, but best of all, the food is top-notch.

It's not strict by-the-book Thai. The standout dish -- and it really was a standout -- from last night was a Chef's Special; a Thai-style salad built around Tasmanian smoked salmon, and shredded green apple. I was curious, so I gave it a try, and I was delighted.

The dish had all the right qualities for a Thai salad: the contrasting textures of the crunchy apple, and the creamy, melting smoked salmon. The dressing had the right notes of sweet and sour and salt -- but of course, neither smoked salmon nor green apple is anywhere near the list of canonical Thai ingredients. But who cares? The flavours married superbly. It was one of the most innovative and utterly delicious things I've eaten in a long time, and any chef who is prepared to extend the style of a classic cuisine to embrace signature produce from the particular region where he works has got a future.

If the restaurant has a flaw, it's that they're sparing with the chili. I like Thai cooking. I like fiery, furious chili. When the meal was done, and it was abundantly clear from the empty plates and happy expressions that we'd enjoyed it, I quietly asked the waitress if it might be possible, on a future visit, perhaps to have some thin-sliced raw chili on the side as a condiment.

Well, her face just lit up, and she apologetically explained that they'd learned to rein in the chili for local tastes, but they would be only too happy to cook extra chili into any dishes I requested. She looked so utterly delighted to find someone asking for chili that I almost laughed. I can understand it, though. Local tastes run to the blander end of the English and Scots spectrum, in regard to spices. I'm doing my best to educate people, but it's slow going.

All right. I'd better close up shop here. I've got a busy spring day in front of me. Adios!

Spring Means Lemonade

Oddly, this year winter slammed on the brakes precisely at the right time, and on the dot of September first, it was noticeably spring. Much warmer. Sunnier. Breezier. Altogether nicer.

Right now, the kids are out playing some bastardised form of cricket in what passes for a back yard. They've been at it off and on all day, and much of yesterday. In fact, in the last two days they've spent more time outdoors than they have cumulatively in the three months preceding, I suspect.

Meanwhile, the lemon trees are loaded, and ripening frantically. It's good. Last year, some irritating beastie ate the rinds off all the ripe lemons while they were still on the trees, and I got very few lemons at all. I like lemons. If I'd found the beastie in question, I would probably have breached certain rules of wildlife protection...

This year, though, we have lemons. Oh, how we have lemons. I sent the Mau-Mau out to pick thirty ripe ones. She did so. I couldn't see any difference to the trees. Some of the lemons she'd picked had big, thick rinds, which I didn't want, so I sent her out to pick another twenty. I still can't see any difference to the trees.

I have done two things with all that lemony goodness. One is a large jar of preserved lemons. Not quite the "Moroccan Lemon" thing, but just as versatile and tasty. What I do is this: I get a bag of rock salt, a bag of hot red chilis, and a shitload of  lemons.

The lemons get individually halved and juiced. The skins and attached pulp are reserved. When I've got enough, I get a large jar. I start with a layer of rock salt. Then I put in a layer of lemon rinds. A sprinkling of rock salt. A layer of chilis. A sprinkling of rock salt. A layer of lemon rinds... and so forth. Crush the contents down. You want to shove as much as you can in there.

Once the jar is almost full, I pour boiling water over the contents until they are covered, then seal the jar and put it aside. A month or so later, the rinds and the chilis are both salt-pickled, and full of amazing flavour. Lemon rinds and chilis preserved in this fashion will last ages, and they are absolutely brilliant with seafood or chicken dishes, or chopped up and tossed through cous-cous, etc. Yum.

But what about that lemon juice, eh? Well, that becomes Flinthart's Very Special Excellent Lemonade. It works like this:

• Take your bowl of lemon juice and pulp. Strain it and squeeze it to get the juice out. For this lemonade, you don't want floaty bits. Might seem contrary to expectations, but... trust me.
• Once you've got all the juice you can extract, add caster sugar to taste. Make it sweeter than you really think is right, though, because you're going to use this like a kind of cordial/flavouring. Once you've sweetened it, stir in maybe a half-teaspoon of pure lemon oil (if you've got it) or good quality lemon essence (not nearly so nice as the lemon oil.)
• Now: for each glass of lemonade, you'll need about four tablespoons of this strong, sweet, lemony wonderfulness. Add a few ice cubes, and then gently add plain soda water. Give it a quick stir, throw in a sprig of mint to make it look really groovy, and drink.

Seriously: the best lemonade that money cannot buy, right there.

And just between us grownups: adding a splash of good gin turns it into outright black magic.

Anyone Want A Surplus Billionaire?

Dear America

You're our ally, right? We've done lots of little military and trade favours for you, right? Electronic spying stations in the outback... handy air- and sea- bases in the South Pacific... support in Iraq... support in Afghanistan.... you know. Stuff like that.

Not that I'm saying you owe us anything, no. Not me. Actually, I'm just setting up to do you a favour here. Really!

See, I know how much you love billionaires over there. You just love the bastards, don't you? You collect 'em. You show 'em off. You like to gloat about how many you've got, and kind of, you know, hold them up so that everyone can look at 'em.

You even take them from other countries, sometimes. You lifted Rupert Murdoch off us, for example, and we're still truly grateful for that. (Thanks again, by the way. Rupert's a real turdsucker. Try and keep him occupied, will you? Have an election or something. Rupe just loves elections.)

You also took Mel Gibson, even though he's only a multi-multi-millionaire. Sure, you took him before he was widely identified as a crazy, foul-mouthed, wife-beating, drunken, God-freaking bigot, but you know, we're still grateful. For a while there, people thought of Mel as an Australian, and frankly if that was still going on, who knows what people would think of us, eh?

Mel Gibson. In case you'd forgotten what crazy looks like.




Now, here's the favour I want to do you, America. I want to enhance your billionaire collection. And it's not just any old billionaire this time. Not some little media magnate or shipping overlord, no. Actually, I want to give you no less than the world's richest woman.

Yeah. Let that one sink in, eh? The world's richest woman.

Come on, that's gotta be special, right? No way your collection is complete as long as Australia's got the world's richest woman. You want her. You need her. Morally, philosophically, in every way that counts, she's really yours, right? Right?

Okay, it's true. Gina Rinehart is uglier than the wrong end of a naked mole rat. But she's rich. Rich!

A naked mole rat. Not pretty, no. Nor is it rich. But I'd still rather sit next to it on a bus than Gina Rinehart.







And okay, she's a morally bankrupt anal fissure who inherited her wealth and has already gone to unconscionable (and apparently illegal!) lengths to prevent any of her offspring from inheriting their share. But she's rich, and that sort of thing goes over perfectly well in America, if you're rich enough.

Okay, yes, she's also a deranged right-wing nutter who makes the masters of the slave economy in your Old South look like kind, gentle, socialist philanthropists. But since when has that ever been a problem for you, America?

Gina Rinehart: more American than America. Come and get her!

Please?


**Edited to add: if anyone thinks I have a particular problem with Rinehart because of her gender... heh. That's nice. You go on thinking whatever you like. But before you start any kind of discussion with me on my sexist approach to fat bastard billionaires, watch this youtube video. Twice.**

A Quiet Word To Anyone Listening

Eleven years ago I moved to Tasmania because my wife wanted us to have kids. I felt then, as I do now, that Tasmania would be a useful place to raise children, and I said quite clearly to those who asked back then that I thought there were some difficult times coming to the mainland.

I didn't foresee the 9/11 shit, no. But I did foresee the decline in oil and energy availability, and I guessed at the economic problems which would result. I also guessed that Queensland was going to cop some real problems from a climate which was already quite obviously beginning to change, and I'd point out that in the last couple years, we've seen record-breaking storms up north, and unprecedented floods in the south. 

I'm not claiming any kind of prescience. I just saying that I read carefully from a wide variety of news sources, and I'm good at pattern recognition, and I've been prepared to make very big life-decisions for myself and my family based on these things. Decisions which have stood up very well for us.

Well. It's that time again, folks.

There's trouble ahead.

Now, I'm well set for this trouble - or as well as I can imagine, short of getting a decent solar installation up and running. But I'm going to talk here, briefly, because those of you who might not yet have discerned the pattern of what's coming might want to maybe think about what steps you want to take for yourselves.

Here's the problem: the world's biggest exporter of food, particularly staples like corn, grain and soybeans, has been in the grip of a once-in-a-century drought for several months now. That would be the USA, of course. There's already been a very significant uptick in basic food commodity prices, and there's more due.

On top of that, it turns out that America's biggest single highway is also badly fucked by this drought. I'm referring to the Mississippi river. Something like 60% of US grain is moved along that river, and God alone knows how much of the soybean crop. Moving the stuff by barge costs a third what it would by rail (if they could find enough rail capacity) and moving it by truck costs maybe six times the cost of barge travel. And again, the sheer volume of river carriage is such that there just aren't enough road-trucks to handle it.

Unfortunately, the river is now so low, and so narrow, that it just can't carry all those big barges. And nobody really knows what to do about it. There's a lot of crops in storage, and in those barges right now. From what I read, they've got maybe two weeks to shift them before they start to go bad.

This, obviously, is not good. But let's add a few things.

Turns out that the grain/corn belt in Europe is also drought-struck at the moment, though not as badly as the US. Badly enough to make things difficult, though.

Now, one more thing: according to CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, it looks as though the El Nino phenomenon is building up once more in the Indian Ocean. And of course, El Nino means drought in Australia -- particularly in the Victorian and NSW wheat-belt areas, probably in about a year's time. Maybe two. (Or not at all. El Nino is hard to predict. We might get lucky. Maybe.)

All of this is already on the table. Any further crises of any sort will only intensify the problems we're already going to face. It would be nice if we didn't get any unexpected floods, fires, tsunamis, crop blights, giant storms, etc... but that's not how the world works, is it? 

A few years ago the world had a food production/distribution crisis. (I should point out that there is a large body of evidence to support the very interesting argument that it was precisely that food crisis which sparked off a series of riots, uprisings, and outright rebellions throughout the Arab world.)  We got through it, but as a result, the world's ready food stores are low. We haven't got a big safety margin here.

I don't pretend to know what kind of ramifications will result from a really serious, world-wide shortfall in food production. I don't know where the wars and riots will start. I don't know which countries will be thrown into turmoil. I don't know which aspects of our global economy will be damaged or destroyed.

I do know this: over the next two years, it's going to be extremely hard to feed seven billion people. And that is, without question, going to cause some very big problems.

You might want to think about your plans fairly carefully. 

Winning At Being Dad

Busy day today. We had one extra with us -- the eldest Double-Banger child -- and we headed into Launceston to run a bunch of errands. Some of those errands took us past the music store: notably a trip to clean and refurbish Genghis' cornet.

Bit of a side story there. Launceston has one pawn shop I know of, and the proprietor is an amiable, interesting fellow. He gets a lot of odd stock through, and Launceston being Launceston, some of it is interesting musical instruments. I mean, right now, hanging in the window, there's a bowl-back lute, a very large zither, and an interesting stringed instrument I don't even recognise. Plus lots of others.

Anyway, a while back I'd dropped in there, and what should they have but quite an old, silver-plated cornet. I was curious, and asked to see it. Turns out it's a Besson, Australian made, and (estimating from the serial number and some Internet research) made somewhere around 1910-1920. But it had been beautifully looked after, and Besson make damned good instruments... so I bought it. It was priced under $200, so it wasn't exactly a gamble, but now, a couple years later, Genghis has taken to the trumpet like a much smaller, much whiter, much more sober Miles Davis, and the investment is paying off. (Yes. He's still playing bass, and enjoying it. But why not two instruments?)

So, we were at the music shop, putting the cornet in for a cleaning and service. And the Mau-Mau... she noticed the ukeleles.

I fuckin' hate ukeleles. I acknowledge their increasing popularity. I acknowledge that the ones coming onto the market now are generally a lot better than the fuck-awful pieces of shit that haunted my youth. I acknowledge that many of the people who play them do so with a sense of irony that adds an extra layer to their enjoyment. But... I fuckin' hate ukeleles.

I was, therefore, less than impressed when Natalie acquiesced, and the Mau-Mau acquired a shiny new music-fucker. However: about five minutes later, in the car, the universe spun dizzily on its axis. The stars aligned... and lo! It was good to be dad.

My seven-year-old daughter was sitting in the back of the car, picking out her first tune on the ukelele. Plucking the tune purely by ear and memory, she did it quite clearly, with decent timing, and a great deal of determination.

Yes. It was Smoke On The Water, by Deep Purple.

That's it, folks. I. Have. Won.

The Man Who Never Came Down

Neil Armstrong’s name shouldn’t be a household word. Not any more.

Don’t go Chernobyl on me yet. Pay attention to what I’m saying. Neil Armstrong, the quiet, modest, engineer and astronaut wasn’t quite 39 in June 1969 when he climbed into the Apollo 11 command module. He never made it down. Instead, a few days later, the First Man On The Moon made a triumphant return to Earth, where he remained an icon, a symbol to the very end of his days.

The First Man On The Moon was a hell of a guy; a hero to the world. But poor Neil: we sent him up there, all of us, hoping, dreaming, wishing, watching that shining ball in the sky at night. We sent him up there on a raging tower of hellfire barely controlled by instruments and systems so primitive they wouldn’t even be sufficient for a modern family car. We sent him up on a wing and a prayer, nobody knowing — least of all the man himself and his companions — whether we could even get him to the moon in one piece, let alone bring them back alive.

We sent three men up there. Two men touched down on the moon. One of them made it back. But Neil Armstrong got lost; marooned. Somehow, we replaced him with The First Man On The Moon.

Credit where it’s due: The First Man On The Moon played his part well. He was modest and humble, acting as an inspiration to people everywhere, both in public and in private. But you have to wonder what he gave up, don’t you? The actor Anthony Perkins sometimes spoke bitterly of his role in Psycho — the role that defined him forever in cinema. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy both publicly struggled against their better known incarnations. The First Man On The Moon never complained at all: he just kept being the role model, the hero, the vital symbol of the greatest of all human achievements. He was an amazing human being. It’s a shame that he had to be so amazing for so very long. But that wasn’t his fault. He did the job, and did it perfectly, and he deserves the greatest of respect for that.

But you and I, now...  in a very real sense,  everyone who looked up at the moon and thought of Armstrong and the others, the lonely footprints, the grainy black-and-white camera footage — we never let Neil Armstrong come back down. Thirty-nine years he lived, man and boy. The First Man On The Moon got forty-three.

There’s nothing wrong with recognising heroic actions. There’s nothing wrong with making a role model out of someone who behaves modestly and well, works with a team, and achieves something genuinely historic as a result. But it’s past time — long past! — that we asked what our hero, the First Man On The Moon might have wanted from us.

Who discovered Antarctica?

Give up? It’s a trick question anyhow. Nobody’s sure whether Cook’s expedition spotted it amongst all the ice in 1773. If they didn’t, then it was probably William Smith and Edward Bransfield in 1820, locating the Antarctic Peninsula.. At much the same time, a Russian called Fabian Gottlieb von Bellinghausen apparently became the first to see the Antarctic continent proper.

Now: who was the first to reach the South Pole?

Oh, that’s easy, right? Everybody knows it was Roald Amundsen, just ahead of Robert Scott’s doomed expedition.

Smith, Bransfield, von Bellinghausen; these are not household names, though they may well be the names of heroic men. Amundsen and Scott, though — why, they went to the South Pole!

Neil Armstrong went to the moon knowing it would change his life. But he neither wanted nor expected  to be the First Man On The Moon forever afterwards. Everything ever said or written about the man suggests he thought he was part of the beginning of something great, something wonderful. He made it as plain as possible: for him, the trip to the moon was just a small step for mankind, though it was a great leap for a single man.

Armstrong went to the moon expecting us to keep taking small steps. The First Man On The Moon spent his whole life wondering when we might remember how to walk again, if ever.

We put Neil Armstrong on the moon with the hopes and desires of a whole world, and then we left him there. We spent billions on wars, and movies and cars and mobile phones and more wars, and meanwhile the Saturn V programme went away, replaced by a shuttle fleet that was never even intended to go as far as the moon. When the shuttles got old and tired, we gave up even that much.

The first of our early mechanical probes has finally gone extra-solar. Launched thirty-five years ago, Voyager One has only just left the boundaries of our star system. In those thirty-five years, what have we done? Well, there are robots on Mars. Probes have visited most of the planets, the odd asteroid, and even the Sun.

But human beings?

We made Neil Armstrong into The First Man On The Moon. By this time, he should have been Neil Armstrong again. He should have been one of a list: the first person on Mars, the first to Venus, the first to the moons of Jupiter, and more. It might not yet be a long list, but at least he wouldn’t have been alone any more. He could have stopped being The First Man On The Moon, and he could have come home at last.

It’s too late for Neil Armstrong. He’s never coming home now. We can’t rescue him. We can only eulogise the First Man On The Moon, and admit our own failure in abandoning the man who went up there in the first place.

But that doesn’t have to be the end. It shouldn’t be the end. For the sake of Neil Armstrong, for the sake of our survival as a species, it must not be the end.

Eugene Cernan is seventy-eight years old. Chances are he’d give almost anything to live long enough that he can stop being the Last Man On The Moon.

For the sake Eugene Cernan; for the sake of the whole world; for the sake of every human being yet unborn: let’s go.

Aargh. Ow.

Well.

Having lately read a couple of very interesting books from a guy called Rory Miller, I've thought long and hard about martial arts, and most importantly, the application and the instruction thereof. I'm not going into any depth or detail here, but I will say this, just once: if you practice any form of martial art for any reason, or if you are concerned in any way about the potential necessity for dealing with violence, you need to read both Facing Violence and Meditations On Violence by this guy. I'm not going to sell him to you. If you're interested, you can look him and his stuff up for yourself.

I will say this, though. As an instructor, these days you can steal nifty technique and methods of practice from the Internet with ease. (Okay, if you're a hardcore traditional style it can be challenging, sure. But for a ju-jitsu instructor trained on the concept that "we will borrow anything that works", YouTube and similar resources are just fucking brilliant.)

Further: once you've earned a real black belt, you should be able to pick up technique and ideas from just about anywhere, assess them, and integrate them with either your own stuff, or the broader range that you teach, if they're worth keeping. Technique is an ocean. You're a bucket. You use what you can carry.

However, the underlying ideas behind combat and conflict and self-defense are extremely important. If you haven't thought long and hard about violence and conflict, then you have no business teaching anything called a "martial art". And no: I don't care if your aikido or your tai chi is the most peaceful exercise on the planet. If you're teaching it as a "martial" art, then you have to accept and understand that it comes from, and is related to, the human tendency to violence.

I've thought about it. A great deal. And read about it. And trained, and practised, and watched and observed. But Rory Miller has also done these things, and frankly, he's done them better. The man writes with clinical accuracy and crystal clarity about what violence is, and how it happens, and what we can do about it. The books are very useful. They are also inexpensive, and not particularly long or complicated.

As a result of reading Miller's stuff, I've done two things. First, I've made it mandatory that everyone aiming at a higher-grade belt has to read the damned things. And second, I've added a section of serious, high-intensity drills to every class. Ugly, potentially painful stuff. Tonight: you've been knocked down on your face. Before you can think of getting up, an attacker armed with a long weapon like an axe (or similar; a hoe, a stick, whatever) moves in to beat the snot out of you wholesale.

Fun stuff. We used padded weapons instead of axes or sticks, but we worked up to full speed and power. There are going to be some bruised people out there in the morning. Including me.

Meanwhile: the weekend was full-on. The Mau-Mau had her official birthday party, complete with helium balloons and a Godzilla Pinata, courtesy of yours truly. Also, because we had a spare kid -- young Deadly D of the Double-Banger clan -- he got a birthday party too. That was fun: Genghis and I went down to the local cheap-ass store, and bought a load of ridiculous stuff to wrap up for him. He got a garden gnome, for instance. And a CD compilation of 70s disco hit music. And a Fun Wig, and a Ninja Sword Kit, and a Bob the Builder belt with tools, etc. All good fun.

It was an energetic and busy day, and when I get time, I'll put up a couple photos. Meanwhile, I'll simply note that Tehani and half her brood were along for the day, including young Miss G, who stayed the night before as a guest of the Mau-Mau.

Once the wee ones cleared away, the slightly older crew stuck around. We barbecued some food, and then I made a load of popcorn and we retired to the Cinema Zone, where we watched The Raid (Redemption)

Yeah, I'm back on the martial arts thing again, but really - this is an interesting film. It's made in Indonesia, with an Indonesian cast and crew (though the director is Welsh, oddly) and it's very cool. It's a martial arts/action flick, and the martial art featured is a high-intensity version of Silat, with an emphasis on the striking. The hero character Rama is played by a young guy called Iko Uwais, whom we first saw in "Merantau". He's got the chops, I must say. He's fast as hell, knows his martial arts... and scarily, he can even more or less act. He's a shitload more convincing than Jason Statham, for example.

One word of caution. The fight sequences in this film are fucking brutal. This is not a movie for impressionable youngsters. There is blood, death, and savagery. And the little guy who plays a character called "Mad Dog" is one of the sc

ariest bad-asses to show up on screen for a very, very long time.

He's interesting, actually. You watch actors like Jason Statham, Arnie or the rest onscreen trying to project that sense of badass, and mostly, they just don't. They're actors. They do impressions. The bottom line is: you can tell the difference. Occasionally, though, you get a trained guy put up on screen, told to be bad. Really bad.

Now, someone who thinks of themselves as an actor will still act. Jet Li, for example. He makes a very cool villain, and he can project a degree of menace. But the guy playing Mad Dog? I think he's just a fighter, who got drafted into the film for his physical abilities. And I think this because he can, without moving a muscle, without changing expression, suggest absolute, ice-cold, psychopathic murder. The only other person I've met who could do that was my old instructor, Shihan Mark Haseman. Step on the mat to spar with him, and he'd just kind of... chill. The light in his eyes would sort of go away, and he'd just... watch you. And you knew damned well that the only reason you were still breathing was because he'd decided it would be that way.

Same thing with the little guy in The Raid. Watch it yourself. You'll see. He makes Hugh Jackman's "Wolverine" look like something from The Wiggles.

Aha. A little research gave me a pocket bio from IMDB. Turns out I'm precisely on the money. Yahyan Ruhian (the actor) is a professional Silat instructor who was hired as a consultant to Merantau (the first film by the same crew) and wound up being cast because he could do the shit they needed, and they couldn't find anyone else who could. So, yeah: professonal man of violence asked to be a bad-ass. Beautiful.

I don't know what they're going to do with the main actor, Iko Uwais. I doubt there are a whole lot of roles for Indonesian hero-types in either Asian or USAnian movies, unfortunately. But there are plenty of roles out there for savage bastards, and I will be extremely surprised if you don't see Yahyan Ruhian cropping up in a raft of films from this point forward.

So, there you have it. I'm going to finish up now, have a shower, and go to bed. Big day of writing and stuff tomorrow...