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2002-08-01 Entry: "Giant Spiders and Getting Lost"

Tuesday proved to be the day I'd get lost. Going to work I missed every exit possible... sailing along thinking "it's not George Bush, it's the next one" and then finding the building passing me on the right and me unable to get to it. I did eventually manage to get turned around and pointed back in the right direction, but this habit of naming and numbering roads and then being completely arbitrary about which you put on a sign has got to stop people. Make your mind up one way or another... I don't mind naming roads for sentimental reasons, but if it's got a number, stick that on all the signs, not just every third or fourth.

Coming home I missed the entry onto George Bush and had to go all round the countryside in an attempt to get turned around. There I was sailing along in roughly the right direction on some obscure back road when I see a sign for the boulevard I live off of. Thinking it'd make a great shortcut I follow it. And then the road ends! Literally... there is no more road... so where's the bit I live on? As it's got to be further than this... well, I'll follow this side road and hope I get back towards where I expect to be... finally I hit another familiar road (but from the other end) and get back to where I live. But what's with roads that don't connect? Did someone decide to build a reservoir in the middle of it and they just chopped it in half? If the road doesn't join, it's a different road... so stop calling it the same thing... it's not that hard a concept is it?

Enough with the traffic rant, I've remembered the film that I couldn't remember from Sunday (actually, I looked up the listings for the cinema hoping it was still showing) - Eight Legged Freaks. I was expecting it to be a bit hokey (I mean, it's a giant spider film and it's got David Arquette and the girl who took over from Wade in Sliders (when they wanted to increase the teen male demographic who watched the show...) so it's not likely to be great intellectual stimulation.

There is however plenty of ironic self-knowing about the film - lots of "let's listen to the kid who knows exactly what's going on rather than believing he's making it all up" and the effects, although not spectacular, are at least reasonable. The jumping spiders are pretty silly, and having all the other spiders pull back to let the big tarantula in is a bit far-fetched... they wouldn't really work together quite as well as they did... but it was nonetheless a good film.