Everyone knows I'm all talk

Well, this latest blogging revival is certainly going well so far, isn't it? I blame failing to master the art of the short post. It's certainly something other people seem to manage easily enough - but not me. Damn my constant verbosity. Also, Facebook is surely killing blogs. I reckon anyway, and I'm an academic expert on these things (apparently), which means there must be at least a 7 percent chance that I'm slightly correct.

You may be wondering where my old comments went. (You probably aren't, but I can't deny it's within the realms of possibility.) It would appear that during my most recent blogging sabbatical, Haloscan (long decried by Tim) was absorbed by something called "JS-Kit" (They tried to notify me of this apparently, at my old Hotmail address, which stopped being used around the late Jurassic period, about the time Archeopteryx was bursting onto the world scene). JS-Kit now have all my comments, and I can export them, but Blogger doesn't support an easy import of them. You can incorporate them into Blogger's system manually, but the only procedure I can find online to do so looks like it would take about 3 days - just to read. The other option appears to be paying JS-Kit 12 American dollars. 12 American dollars?! Do they think I'm made of money? So we're just all going to have to mourn the loss of the old comments until I can find some way to get them back...I'll keep at it. Sporadically.

Anyway, 48HRS came around again, yes it did. We made a film I was personally pretty happy with, but it didn't quite reach the heights of last year and conseqently travelled no farther than the Chch final in competition. Lightning was never likely to strike twice in a row I suppose, but after the giddy success of 2009, this couldn't help but feel a bit "...oh", despite the fact I even tried to steel myself against this effect beforehand, anticipating it would happen. Still, people seemed to like it, we won a few award categories in Christchurch, io9 deemed it worthy of a link, and this seemed to go down quite well too. So another successful year (if in a non-prize winning way).

More films should now be made. Yes. Although that statement bears a lot of resemblance to "more blogs should be written". (And see title of this post.) But maybe we'll get our A into G a bit more this year. If it stops raining.

The weather is ridiculous of late, and probably only making ski bunnies and fish populations in low-volume waterways happy. Damned ski bunnies. It seems to get repeated a lot that Hitler thought skiing was stupid. Well, me and Hitler both. Not a phrase you like using too often, but nevertheless undeniably applicable to certain statements. History shall record both Ben and Hitler:

Thought skiing was stupid.
Typically wore facial hair.
Ate.

Hmm, does that get repeated a lot that Hitler hated skiing, or did I just blatantly make it up? I certainly used to have a history lecturer that asserted this. Using the Google search string "Hitler and skiing" to try and confirm this theory has turned up a few interesting results; it's amazing how much the 2 line excerpt from the site in the results page tends to tell you about the page. Apparently the web will sell me a Hitler Youth Ski Proficiency Badge for $27.50. This was one good out-of-context extract:

In some instances we can also see the girls wearing male Hitler Youth ski pants, which are similar in style but featured a button fly and back pockets.

...and the one result I did click on yielded this, which appears to be some guy being interviewed about what is presumably a short story he has written:

THE BELIEVER: “Hitler Ski Story” is a funny and bizarre investigation into the Führer’s predicament as a “little man” in modern society. I thought of Barthelme’s treatment of icons like Robert Kennedy and Cortés. Hitler tries to learn the stem Christie technique, fails, and then pisses a swastika into the snow. What prompted you to put him on skis?

BENJAMIN WEISSMAN: Initially, I wanted to write that story from the perspective of a Hitler historian, under the premise that there was new information about Hitler having been a lousy skier, which is sort of the ultimate insult for a Tyrolean. But after seeing photographs of Hitler in the Alps, I couldn’t help but imagine his experience trying to ski. Maybe putting him on skis makes him an easy target for parody and humiliation. But he deserves it. Force him to ski. Have athletic Eva Braun, who really was a jock, show him up.

There you have it - Eva Braun was a jock, apparently. Apart from the further (weird) evidence that the Hitler Youth really was rather like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fan Club, only with Hitler (Hitler Youth ski pants? Come on!) - my briefest of Internet enquiries has not proved that the Führer was averse to skiing as an activity. And so the already few opportunities for me to say "I agree with Hitler's position on this issue" are perhaps reduced to absolute zero.

If he did think skiing was stupid though, I'd be right there with him (CONTROVERSY!). Last time I went was with Karen to Mount Hutt some time ago, and it only served to once again hit me with the same old very specific "What? What is with this thing? I mean...what?" feeling that skiing is one of the few things to produce in me. I guess essentially it boils down to just not getting it, but there is an element of extremely not getting it. There are plenty of sports I don't get remotely into: motor racing, yacht racing - ah, yacht racing, I'm so not into you - in fact there's a long list: water polo, Aussie Rules, baseball (baseball actually is what I imagine people that don't get cricket think cricket is), and so on. I just don't care about them. They leave me alone, and I leave them alone. But there are a number of things about skiing that I find actively weird, highly irritating, or both:

1) The previously mentioned ski bunnies. I like cricket, I mean I love cricket. But I don't live cricket. I don't count non-cricket playing times as drab intervals in which I go and live a meaningless existence earning enough money to go and play cricket again. I don't curse winter afternoon sunshine because it means it's not snowing in the mountains. I don't buy a specialised motor vehicle for the purpose of making getting to cricket easier. And I sure as hell don't pay a $1750 subscription every cricket season (1750 dollars? For the privilege of making one's way down a hill? Like, New Zealand dollars?).

2) Ski instructors, all of whom seem to equate not being able to ski with having an I.Q of 75. Leeeft foot...right foot! Leeeft foot...right foot! Leeeft foot...right foot! Leeeft foot...shut up shut up SHUT UP, we have GRASPED THE GODDAMNED SEQUENCE.

3) The ski industry. How the hell does it even work, anyway? There are 2000 people on the hill and fully every second one of them seems to be an employee of the ski field. What? Well, we'll just do a lot of business and...nope, we make no money at all this weekend because it's a bit windy. What?

4) Rocks. Does no-one else see that the ski field is liberally sprinkled with them? Hard, pointy rocks. Rocks are well known for their being bad to speed into. As if such a blase attitude towards rocks was somehow not devil-may-care enough, those in foreign parts go for ski fields with trees all over them as well. See also 4.5) has it somehow escaped everyone's attention that if I fail to make that unfenced corner there, I will ski off that very steep bank and fall 25 metres on to the unyielding ashphalt of the car park? Seriously, have you just not noticed? Or is it that skiing is TOTALLY INSANE?

5) The snow-plough stop. This is simply an out-and-out LIE. A LIE, I tell you.

6) Leeeft foot...right foot! Leeeft foot...right foot! Leeeft foot...

And now, having elaborated on just some of the ways that skiing is stupid, I should probably go to bed, as I believe Karen has set the alarm (since Theo hasn't always been doing his job early enough in this respect lately). Ah, alarm clock. In a poll of Mankind's Most Hated Inanimate Objects, I think you'd probably win. No, actually I suspect landmines would beat you. But only just.