Parkour or running for your life

In this post I cover Parkour, linguistic memes, Big Brother Australia, UK and USA, some books I’ve been reading, Pirates of the Carribean and more!

Today’s featured photographer is an HDR photographer named ehoyer. Check out his flickr site.

 

 

 

Index of this post

1. Parkour
   
2. Linguistic Memes in Big Brother
3. Big Brother Australia
4. Big Brother UK and USA
   
5. On a personal not and some more reading I’ve been doing
   
6. Pirates of the Carribean II Dead Man’s Chest review

 

Parkour

 

I was watching yesterday’s episode of Top Gear and I remembered one of the sports that I really enjoyed watching and wanted to try doing.

It’s called Parkour, invented by a Frenchman David Belle and popularized by Luc Besson in his movie Yamakasi and Banlieue 13. It’s like cross-country running except that you run in an urban environment, trying to get most efficiently from point A to point B, by climbing, running, jumping and vaulting.

 

I used to do street rollerblading and a bit of vert, I find that this is pushing the concept of “extreme” sports even further. If I’m not making any sense to you, you have to think back to a Jackie Chan movie. Think about his acrobatics and jumping and that is Parkour.

 

There are different variations of Parkour. Parkour is going from A to B the most efficiently possible. Free running or Free Style Parkour focuses more on aesthetics, vaults, summersaults and aerial twists. FSPK includes more tricks.

 

Parkour uses principles of :

 

Acrobatics

Martial arts

Running

Also, Parkour incorporates elements of dance. Some Canadian resources: PK in Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver. The worldwide fanclub of PK and PK in Australia. Google Parkour in your neighborhood and see if it’s being practiced.

 

When I was a kid, I used to do all these stupid stunts, jumping down whole staircases (I still do this today) and playing Spiderman by scaling walls and obstacles. Now these blokes do it in real life and it looks fun as hell. And who hasn’t heard about the “don’t touch the floor” game where you try to go about in a room without touching the floor. There are so many possibilities with this, you’re not stuck on wheels or a board, you just run.

 

If you haven’t seen a video of Parkour or a clip, check it out.

 

From Banlieue 13

 

Founder of Parkour, David Belle in action

 

From Wikipedia’s entry on Parkour:

Parkour (IPA: /paʁ.’kuʁ/, often abbreviated PK) is a physical discipline of French origin in which participants attempt to pass obstacles in the fastest and most direct manner possible, using skills such as jumping, vaulting and climbing, or the more specific parkour moves. The obstacles can be anything in one’s environment, so parkour is often practiced in urban areas because of many suitable public structures, such as buildings, rails, and walls.

A traceur (/tʁa.’sœʁ/) is a participant of parkour.

 

Linguistic Memes of Big Brother

 

A few linguistic memes I’ve noticed in the Big Brother shows. This happens because the housemates live in a closed environment and the way one person talks affects the others. I’m sure you have noticed this that cliques of people can develop their own vocabulary that may seem bizarre to people who aren’t in that clique. Chillax is an example. In BBUK, “babes” and “You alright?” have propagated themselves into almost every housemates mouth. They also use “You know what I mean?” and “I know” a whole bunch of times.

 

In BBAU, “No worries” and “Massive” have also been used a lot. They were probably introduced by the local wordsmith and poet, Jamie, founder of all Jamiesms.

 

Here is a quick look at one of his poems that I was able to transcribe last week, with a correction from Brad.

 

The windows not portals outward upon freedom of thought

But reflections inward into awkward introversion

These walls have seen strangers, faces so eerily blank and phone(?) folorn foreign

These faces have seen people, empty as we see them live

 

Now Jamie, when can we see the book?

 

Big Brother Australia

 

I don’t know why, but Krystal wears the most atrocious make-up during eviction nights, now what’s up with that? She looks like she’s at Halloween playing an Egyptian or a freak. She is pretty that girl, but she needs to use less make-up. When she is au naturel, she looks the best. That is when she wears no make-up, not when she is naked.

 

It was the last nominations ceremony on BBAU and this is how it broke down

 

Jamie 2 pts Max 1 pt Chris

Camilla 2pts Max 1pt Chris

David 2pts Jamie 1pt Chris

Max 2pts Chris 1pt Camilla

Chris 2pts Max 1pt David

 

This was before the 3 pt twist.

 

Jamie used his 3 pt twist on himself and he was no longer nominated.

 

Chris 6

Max 5

David 1

Camilla 1

So everybody except Jamie is up for nomination.

 

This week is a double eviction. What the housemates don’t know is that there will be a surprise nomination on Wednesday. This is the last week of BBAU. Final show is on next Monday.

 

Big Brother UK

 

The nominations are also in for BBUK. In a new twist, the housemates have been divided into pairs, and when one of the pair was nominated, the other one was automatically nominated as well for eviction. On Friday, a pair will leave the house.

 

The housemates up for eviction are in pairs

 

Imogen & Susie

Michael & Spiral

Richard & Pete

 

It looks like Michael & Spiral will be leaving the BBUK house on Friday.

Big Brother USA

 

Again an update from my wife, it looks like Chicken George won the veto competition, Kaysar shaved his head and James nominated Jase for eviction. So Dr Will and Jase are up.

 

On a personal note and some reading I’ve been doing

 

 

For some reason, I had a really hard time falling asleep on Sunday. It’s not that I wasn’t tired, but I kept waking up. Maybe I drank too much tea on Sunday. Hopefully, I was able to recuperate on Monday night. I’m still a bit tired but I’m feeling loads better.

 

I was on the radio Monday afternoon commenting on CBC Radio One on Alastair Reynolds and Revelation Space. I also mentioned that on my to-read pile in the next few weeks is Ilium and Olympos from Dan Simmons. I have already read them twice, but this is part of some research that I’m doing for my Galactic Rim stories. I have had a lot of trouble finding Redemption Ark from Alastair Reynolds, I’ll have to order it in. I have just finished Revelation Space from Reynolds. I was reading Chasm City at the same time. I’m about 1/8 through. I keep remembering certain passages of Reynolds work in the RS universe but I don’t remember in which book it is. I’m pretty sure it’s in his most recent ones, either Absolution Gap or Pushing Ice. However, I’m missing the 3^rd one in the RS series, Redemption Ark which comes before Absolution Gap, so I guess I’ll have to start Pushing Ice whilst continuing reading Chasm City. Redemption Ark is the 3^rd in the series and Chasm City is the 2^nd.

 

One thing that is frustrating is that whilst Reynolds resolves most of his intrigues in Absolution Gap, he still leaves the reader questioning what will happen. Especially after Galactic North, you don’t know anymore, because the galaxy is still threatened by the Greenfly. I guess this will be resolved not in his next book, but in another book, probably in 2008 or 2009, from what I gather form the author himself and his website. He is in the process of writing the next novel in the series. Though from what has been written and speculated, Reynold’s next book takes places 100 years before the Melding Plague on Yellowstone and is “24 in Space” and is called The Prefect. It will be published in 2007.

 

Now, how about another book in RS to continue the story about the Greenfly? The origin of Greenfly was explained in Glacial.

 

I’m also missing Century Rain from Reynolds. I have been able to read most of his short speculative fiction stories in the RS universe. Most of them are being re-released, but they had been published before in compendiums. I’m still finishing Turquoise Days.

 

And so I haven’t put up the last chapter of Galactic Rim yet, so sue me. If I was doing this fulltime, it wouldn’t be a problem, but I still have to work. So maybe a bit later. In a few days. I promise.

 

Pirates of the Carribean II: Dead Man’s Chest

 

I was finally able to watch the last Pirate movie yesterday. The premise of this movie is that Captain Jack Sparrow has to try and save his soul which he had promised to Davy Jones. In the midst of all this, Elizabeth (Keira Knightly) and Will (Orlando Bloom) get mixed up again in his quest.

 

This movie is the second of a trilogy and has great special effects, the most memorable is the Kraken monster of the deep that engulfs a few ships, called forth by Davy Jones. Davy Jones looks like a mind flayer, an octopus / human hybrid.

 

 

 

Johnny Depp continues to play Sparrow as though he is perpetually drunk. I like him and he plays the pirate quite well, but I heard that there were complaints from Disney.

 

 

This is a good movie, nothing incredible, but fun to watch with your mates on a Friday night out.

 

 

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