InsaneJournal

Two Shops and a Funeral (and SV)

Well, I survived the funeral. That was probably about the longest weekend of my life. Most of Friday was spent helping mum do things like formatting the program, ripping the music and scanning and cropping the photos. The funeral home had been kind of vague on what format it wanted media in (protip: “DVD format” is not a recognised media type), but after some discussion I broke out Keynote and made a slideshow.

Saturday involved re-doing the slide show according to the somewhat complicated music/photo syncing that mum wanted to go in time to the different speeches and readings. With my Google-fu, I managed to get about 90% of it worked out sweetly and was only foiled by the fact that Keynote doesn’t have the ability to loop two tracks on one slide, and I was too lazy to find a way of splicing the music together.

This turned out to be just as well, because come Monday we found out that while we could totally plug T’Kyn into the funeral home’s TV screen (after a bit of cajoling and assertions that we’d “put it back the way we found it after, trust us we’re totally in IT”), the sound wasn’t hooked up. Luckily we’d bought a CD of the soundtrack, so the funeral consisted of me and Mat sitting in the AV booth at the back of the chapel, queuing music and pressing space bar to progress the slide show (the actual funeral conductor having disclaimed responsibility on account of it all being too complicated). It’s the only funeral I haven’t cried at — okay, two tears — mostly because I was spending the entire time panicking that I’d fuck it up. Because, yanno, it wasn’t like the audience solely consisted of my entire family and all their oldest friends or anything. Black. Shame.

And then — to make matters more exciting — the conductor comes into the tiny booth about halfway through and says, “Since you’re in here anyway, you can do the lowering of the coffin.” Oh great, no pressure.

I was supposed to wait for a signal from mum to press the green button that would take Pa’s coffin away into the floor but, well, as it turned out I didn’t. And, yeah, that thing lowers a lot faster than I’d expected.

But, other than that I think it went well. It was mentioned a couple of times during the ceremony that the reason we didn’t have a minister or anything was because family was very important to Pa. So all the speaking was done by family, the program was made by the family and even the AV — the thing I’d be guessing everyone leaves up to the professionals — was done by the family. Even if that meant a few… hiccups.

I still think he would’ve approved.

Of course, thanks to her investigations into Pa’s history for her eulogy, mum’s now obsessed with Freemasonry. I told her I’d get her an apron for her birthday. She didn’t believe I’d be able to buy one without actually being a Mason myself but, well, I have Great Faith in the Internet trumping a not-so-secret-society any day.

And then, on Tuesday, we went to the Kino. Going to the Kino is, like, a family tradition whenever we’re in Sydney. I was alarmed to note that they seemed to be cutting back their stocks of A5 and B5 sized ring binders. I love these things and I’ve go no idea where I can buy them online. I was kind of after a large A5-sized one to archive the stuff from the “working” notebook I keep in my bag but, alas, there was nothing suitable. Hrm…

I also bought The Plucker because Brom is, like, my art hero. Okay, he’s apparently not a great writer but… Jesus the illustrations well and truly make up for it. And the final thing in my basket was Issue #2 of Tokyopop’s translated Gothic & Lolia Bible. For old time’s sake (I couldn’t find Issue #1). Haven’t read it yet, so no opinions on that front but… yeah. These times, they are a’changin’.

Anyway, the thing about the Kino in Sydney is that it’s about two blocks away from the new Apple Store. So — like everyone else — we went for a stickybeak.

The place is… really weird. Now, don’t get me wrong; I love Apple. I was a reluctant convert but since getting my first PowerBook I’ve never looked back. Once I got over the fact that it wasn’t Windows,¹ I fell in love with OS X. I’ve always loved the sleek physicality of the high-end aluminium laptops (I’m not so keen on the plastic ones), and I adore the batPod’s glass front² and the fact the thing is so damn heavy. Apple products feel quality. There’s so much cheap consumer tech floating about and I love that Apple doesn’t ‘do’ that, even if it means its products are more expensive.

So I love Apple… but I don’t get the zealotry. I really don’t. I mean, yeah, Apple makes nice stuff and I like nice stuff… but travelling to a foreign country in order to line up overnight outside a store just so you can be one of the first people in? I don’t get that shit. And the thing is, Apple just don’t sell that many products. What the hell are they doing with three floors of shop front?

Well, as it turns out, they’re selling the “Apple lifestyle”. Hard.

Here’s the deal. The whole front of the store is glass. The actual shop floor itself is much longer than it is wide, with every floor ending at a half-height glass partition that looks down on the open atrium entry thing. The famous “glass staircase” is hidden behind the back wall and is the only part of the shop not visible from the street.

Because that’s the thing; the store isn’t made for the people inside. It’s made for the people outside. It’s designed so that people on the street can look into a living display case of people using Apple products. It’s taunting the people outside.

The first floor is almost solely laptops. The second iPods, and the third is dominated by the “Genius Bar”; tech support, essentially. The first and second floors are dominated by large tables, each containing about a dozen of the product each particular floor is selling. The whole point is to get people touching and playing. To be honest, I like this idea; the selling point for Apple products is their user experience, and Apple obviously knows this and is working it. Hard. I also didn’t notice this at the time — had to have it pointed out to me by someone else — but there are no obvious cash registers in the store. Instead, the staff all have portable PoS devices. It’s interesting, because it adds to that feeling you’re in a showcase rather than a shop.

Very clever, Apple.

So mum and dad spent a lot of time fiddling with iPods after becoming curious of mine when they caught me watching videos on it in the car. Mat and I jumped on the staircase figuring that if we could get it to shatter we could sue Apple for zillions (it didn’t work). We were there for, I dunno, fifteen minutes maybe — fighting the crowd and sweltering in the heat³ — and left with the impression of a company making way too much money.

… but I’m still getting an iPhone next month.

Those videos I was watching in the car? Yeah, Smallville.

It’s an… odd show. It’s taken me one and a bit seasons, but I’ve finally come to the opinion that its main flaw is, indeed, extremely crappy writing (I was originally tossing up between bad acting and bad writing; the writing won out). When the show works, it works. I think it skims across some really interesting and quintessential themes — teenage alienation (pun intended), the importance of family, the nature of heroism — and there’s a good show under there somewhere.

But it all gets eaten up by the hideous beast that is Clana.

I was kinda surprised to find I didn’t actually dislike Lana. Okay, she’s kind of morbid and self-involved, but she actually seems to be aware of this fact (when she catches herself sleeping on her parents’ graves in “Nocturne” she says something along the lines of “What am I doing?”) and when she’s a Scooby in the Clarkgang she works. I don’t like her as a love interest. For anyone. Her relationship with Clark in S1 veers between stalking and unfaithfulness, with I don’t think is fair on anyone’s character (and, for the record, I actually really like Whitney) and in S2 seems to mostly involve her banging on tediously about Trust and Honestly.

And, yeah. I agree with gnosis on this one; the main thing that throws me out of the show is when it starts beating me over the head with heavy-handed metaphors. Smallville wouldn’t know subtly if it bit it on the ass, and this is what I mean by bad writing. It’s like, okay we get that Clark’s secret causes strain on his personal relationships. Seriously, we get it. Bring it up every now and again but not every damn episode. Multiple times.

And the other thing is that the interactions between the characters just don’t work. It’s an ensemble cast show but the ensemble is just too separated. This is where I think it gets soundly trumped by, say, Buffy. Buffy established as of the Pilot that the Scoobys were ‘in’ on The Secret. SV doesn’t and it suffers from it. Badly. There’s far too much telling and not nearly enough showing. Clark takes about four episodes to start referring to Lex as “like my best friend” but they never actually do anything that doesn’t involve The Plot in some fashion. Chloe and Pete get the same treatment — though we can at least assume that Clark goes to school with them — because, again, all the spare time in the show is eaten up by the Clana monster.

God I hate that thing.

So, yeah. There was something decent in here but, seriously, NEEDS LESS LOVE TRIANGLES.

Thank gods for fanfic.

And finally, I left a copy of Chainbreaker in the library today. I’ve never stolen anything out of a store before, let alone in and it sure was an odd experience.

I think I got away with it. No idea what the library will do with it once it’s discovered but, well, that’s half the fun, isn’t it?

… I still need to get used to Firefox’s new address bar thing. Searching on title rather than URI; what’s up with that?

1. I tell people it takes about three months. ^
2. I’m totally bummed that Apple has ditched this look for its latest generation iPod Classics. The new rounded edges and matte finish just make me go… meh. ^
3. Overcoat plus hoodie plus long sleeve t-shirt make for a sad Dee. ^

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