This is yet another laugh-out-loud Adrian Mole diary. This time he begins the diary at the age of 34, but he is still the same earnest, pedantic, letter-writing Adrian.

 

He has moved away from his flaky parents’ home into a pricey loft apartment on Rat Wharf, not realizing that there’s a reason for the “rat” appellation. It could also have been called “Aggressive Swan Wharf” for that matter, but we’ll get back to that later.

 

Adrian is a great admirer of Tony Blair and a staunch believer in the existence of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and is thus a supporter of Britain going to war.

 

He is a would-be published writer but hasn’t as yet achieved any success in that field; he is working on a book to be entitled “Celebrity and madness” but neither has he yet persuaded any celebrity to allow him to interview him or her on that subject, not surprisingly, considering the title.

 

Adrian is the arranger of a creative writing group that meets regularly though he does not wholly appreciate the literary efforts of the others. One of the members is the elderly Gladys, who keeps writing soppy poems about cats, such as:

“Poor Blackie’s up in Heaven,

God took her life away,

He said, you’ll go to Devon,

And have a holiday.”

 

Unfortunately, he has little success in persuading celebrities to visit the group and give a talk; as far as I recall, Cherie Blair doesn't even deign to reply to his letter. Thus, the group rapidly dwindles to only two.

 

Adrian has two sons, Glenn, 17, who is in basic training in the army, and in danger of being sent off to war in Iraq, and a younger son, William, who now lives with his mother in Nigeria.

 

Glenn writes frequent letters to Adrian, but unlike his verbally proficient father, Glenn is rather lacking in basic grammar and spelling skills.

 

Adrian is still madly in love with his childhood sweetheart, Pandora, who is now a junior minister and a household name. He somehow becomes involved with a woman called Marigold and then with her sister, Daisy, even though Marigold is insisting that he marry her. There are numerous complications.

 

He furnishes his loft apartment with stylish new furniture not to mention curtains for his glass lavatory, whose see-through walls are extremely irritating for the prudish Adrian; but he does so through the kind services of MasterCard and Barclaycard who insist on forcing him to accept thousands of pounds in credit and sending him blank cheques; this, of course, leads to poor Adrian getting into a pretty pickle as far as his finances are concerned.

 

It now only remains to mention the aggressive swans that inhabit the canal adjacent to Adrian’s abode. The leader of the pack, Gielgud, is “particularly vicious” and takes an instant dislike to Adrian. The town council member to whom Adrian complains fails to understand the problem; they won’t help him get rid of the swans but will grant him  help with conflict resolution work with his supposed neighbour, Mr. Swan, whom they understand to be the source of the problem.

 

There are many more complications and convolutions in Adrian’s story, including the problems of his parents who can’t find out which romantic partners they wish to have, and those of his gay, blind friend, Nigel.

 

The book is brilliantly written and uproarious and reminds us of what was going on in Britain and the world in 2002 and 2003. The main theme concerns, of course, Adrian’s obsession with the weapons of mass destruction and the war in Iraq.

 

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Robert Downey Jnr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrance Howard

Release: 2 May 2008

IMDB User Rating: 7.9

Rotten Tomatoes User Rating: 91%

 

I thought I had already written a review of this film (on IMDB that is), so it was a good thing that I have decided to go back and rewatch the Marvel Cinematic Universe films again (if only so I can have a better idea of what had happened previously, especially since the movies seem to reference events from the earlier films on a regular basis) so that I can review some of the films that I have watched in the past, but had not got around to reviewing. Anyway, this is the 'first' film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (though some could argue that the Ang Lee version of the Hulk was actually the first since the events of the Incredible Hulk do seem to come after it, despite there being a number of changes to the Bruce Banner's history) and it certainly has kicked off a craze, with at least two films being released a year, as well as at least two television series.

 

Anyway, Iron Man literally sets the stage for what is to follows. First of all we have this guy wandering around saying that he is from the 'Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division' which is truncated to the acronym SHIELD at the end of the film. We also have Nick Fury making an appearance indicating that he is looking to start up a group and that Tony Stark isn't the only person around that happens to have super powers (even if those super powers consist entirely of a flying metal suit). It was probably logical to also have Ironman as the first movie since he apparently was the one who initiated the Avengers.

 

Well, the film is basically about how Tony Stark, a billionaire playboy who happens to run a corporation that develops and sells weapons, becomes Iron Man. The thing is that he is also a playboy, and a tinkerer, which means that he is more interested in building things, and having fun, than actually running the company, which means that the company is doing a lot of things that he doesn't actually know about. However the realisation of who his company is selling weapons to comes to light when he is captured in Afghanistan after demonstrating one of his weapons that he claims to have the capability of stopping a war with one shot. Well, the problem is that when he demonstrates the power of this weapon, the other side want it as well, so they kidnap him to force him to make one.

 

As well as being about how Iron Man becomes Iron Man, the film is also has an underlying theme about the military industrial complex. He we have a private corporation that years ago assisted the United States to develop a weapon to defeat the Japanese now double dealing – that is selling weapons to both sides in a conflict. It is the idea that the only person who makes money out of a war are the weapons manufacturers, and the longer the war goes on, the more money that they make, which means that it is in their interest for there to be a perpetual war. However, selling to just one side in the war doesn't really help with the profits, especially since one side may have a huge advantage, however selling to both sides means that the odds are evened out, and also that the war is likely to last a lot longer.

 

As for the villains, you sort of have two – there is the Ten Rings, an organisation that Iron Man is regularly confronting in the comics (and while they are operational in Afghanistan, when I first watched the film I simply thought they were insurgents, or at least Taliban, however this time I realised that they were actually a mercenary force working for the Taliban), and the Iron Monger, who also happens to be Tony Stark's 2IC, who then builds his own Iron Man suit to take on Tony.

 

As for the film, yep, it's pretty good, and I also picked up a lot more the second time round, which is not surprising since I do have the advantage of having seen many of the other films in the franchise already, so by rewatching them I also pick up a few more things, such as when Rhodey looks at one of the suits and says 'next time' which is flagging the arrival of War Machine in the next instalment. A good movie, pretty enjoyable, and I have to admit that Robert Downey Junior certainly plays the role quite well.

 

For those who are interested I have written a blog post on the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (if only as an aide de memoire).

 

 

This is one of those really strange and speculative books about why the pyramids were actually built. I have probably mentioned it before and I will mention it again that it is not surprising that all these strange and far-fetched ideas about the origin and purpose of the pyramids have dominated our mind and our literature. The pyramids are ancient buildings which boggle our mind and inspire our imaginations. In fact the pyramids have spawned entire television series (Stargate) about how they were landing pads for spaceships.

The idea in this book is that the pyramids were a weapon of mass destruction created by an advanced, and lost, civilisation, similar to Atlantis. The idea, which I actually believe holds water, is that prior to the ancient civilisations that we know, there were more advanced civilisations, in fact more advanced than we are at the moment, that wiped themselves out in a cataclysmic war. This occurred not so much before history was written down, but rather before any of the surviving texts that we have were written.

However, there are hints in some ancient texts that such a civilisation may have been possible. Plato writes about the lost civilisation of Atlantis, though it is debatable as to whether he actually made this civilisation up to attempt to prove a point, or whether the conversation between Socrates and Timeaus (and then Critias) actually occurred. It is interesting to note that Plutarch, in his life of Solon, indicates that the story of Atlantis did exist before Plato, and that it was originally learned by Solon after he travelled to Egypt and spoke with the priests there. Unfortunately, there is no real corroborating evidence to support this from the Egyptian point of view.

There is also the antediluvian Biblical account, where we follow the line of Cain. We notice that this line, which ends with Lamach bemoaning the fact that he will be cursed for murdering somebody, gives us details of cultural and technological development. We are told of the development of art and music, and also told of the development of iron working. Some might argue that because it was the line of Cain that developed technological advances then such advances are evil (though I have yet to hear a fundamentalist preacher go down that line, but I suspect some have). However, it should be noted that the technological advancements pretty much end with the level of technology that existed at the time of writing. Further, the line of Cain does not go all the way to the flood, which indicates the possibility of further advancement above and beyond what the writer knew or conceived of, namely because I feel that technology would unlikely have become stagnated at that point in time.

We also have some interesting accounts from the Mesopotamian libraries of possible Antediluvian technology. These accounts are rather vague and coated in language that indicates that the writer had little knowledge or understanding of what this technology entailed, however, as I have written previously, it flags possible genetic engineering technology in advance of what we have today.

As for this book, the idea is that the pyramids were some sort of weapon, that when activated, could send a rain of destruction anywhere on the Earth. The writer has indicated that there are places on the Earth which suggest some sort of nuclear weapon had been detonated there in times past. Further, we also have evidence of the complete desolation of the Sahara desert, another possibility that some weapon was detonated there that completely obliterated the landscape and from which it has never recovered.

When I speak about such a weapon, I am not speaking of missiles such as we have today, or even a weapon that shoots from the pyramid to its destination, but one that apparently has the power to simply create an explosion at a certain, specific location. However, the concerns that I have with this idea is that there does not appear to be any indication that were was any technological items in the pyramids. Granted, they could have been removed and destroyed long ago when the civilisation collapsed and the pyramids were overrun. Also there is the argument that the pyramids were built by Cheops, either as a tomb, or as a temple complex (which is apparently how later dynasties used them). However, we must remember also that up until recently, the pyramids were believed to have been built by the Israelites during their years of oppression, until it was discovered that they existed there long before Abraham (and as I have indicate elsewhere, I have suspicions that the modern dating method of the oppression and the exodus are also wrong).

 

I enjoyed Weapons of Mass Destruction more than the next volume, The Prostrate Years. It featured Adrian at his obtuse best, from writing to Tony Blair for proof of WMDs so he can get his holiday deposit back from his travel agent, to buying and completely outfitting a new condo with a succession of store credit cards, to falling haplessly into a romance with no idea how to extricate himself, this is the Adrian Mole I've always enjoyed reading.

It may come from a smug sense of superiority that I'm a little uncomfortable with, but these books have always been about how hilarious it is every time he completely misses the point. (The next book, as I already wrote in a review, has him much more put-upon and a victim - and most of all, it's just not as funny.)

Credit woes, fear about the state of the world, wondering if your girlfriend's family is completely mad - Weapons of Mass Destruction hits it out of the park. Again. If there is to be another volume, I hope it gets back to this level of insanity.

Ein recht enttäuschendes Buch. Konnte ich über Adrian im Alter von 13,75 Jahren noch lachen, so wirkt er hier nur noch albern. Die Erfahrungen seiner Jugend sind offensichtlich an diesem Naivling spurlos vorbeigezogen, sein Verhalten ist dämlich und peinlich. Weitere Bücher dieser Reihe werde ich mit Sicherheit nicht lesen.