Sunday 30 November 2008

#53

They say 'money makes the world go round'. 'They', are wrong. Love, lust, sex and the resulting offspring are what really what makes the world turn. Reproduction: it's the primary objective of just about every living thing on the entire planet. That's a fact. 'Reproduction?', sounds a bit cold and scientific doesn't it? Perhaps not something you want to think about too often in case it makes life seem less special, less romantic, or less miraculous. Your life is not a miracle... no... not just a miracle, it's a thousand miracles, because you yourself are the product of a thousand stories of 'girl meets boy' (romantic enough?) over the past million years that us humans, in one variety or another, have walked the earth. A thousand parents before, anxiously muddled through parenthood, battling against adversity: in times of famine feeding their child when they had none, hiding their child when marauders attacked, holding their child aloft when flood waters came, huddling their child close against fire, storm and the cold... and that child, in effect, now, turns out to be you, and if just one of those parents had not invested all that love and protection somewhere along the line, then you would simply not exist. Since you do exist, and since the business of continuing to exist takes up a lot of your time, then it is all too easy to neglect marveling at your sheer infinitesimal good fortune of being alive. Saying we've all beaten the odds to be here at all, would be a massive understatement.

And so, upon the good news that Marc has just become a Dad, I wish continuing good luck to his new son Mason and all the other new children across the globe as you take us funny old humans into the future.

As Buzz Lightyear would say: 'to infinity and beyond'.

And in fact, as an after-though, maybe we could think of a new name to replace the rather cold scientific term of 'reproduction'... maybe because all sorts of animals are caught-up in it maybe we could name it after some nice little common-all-garden animals, hmmm, maybe we could call it something like: "the birds and the bees"......

Saturday 15 November 2008

#51

How bloody annoying. Unless you have a pair of scissors on you (which would be unwise given today's tougher laws on carrying knives) you can't properly enjoy a Mars bar or Marathon bar, or the like, while out and about. Why? Because of the bloody wrapper. How are you supposed to open these things with an ounce of decorum? There are lots of ways of opening them poorly that's for sure, all by splitting at the pinked end longitudinally. Bah. You always end-up with the pinked end of a flappy bit of damn plastic wrapper pokin' in yer face while you're trying to chow down on your favourite choccy bar, which severely detracts you from that opulent emersive enjoyment. And if you can't fully enjoy your chocolate bar then it's a waste, because if you're eating all that sugar, and so putting on all that weight, then you want to make sure you get 100% enjoyment out of the experience, don't you? I'm sure this annoys me much more than many readers because I remember the supposedly low tech old days when Mars bars came in waxed paper wrappers, and you could rip this low tech wrapper neatly across one end of the chocolate bar, almost as neatly and simply as if you cut it with a pair of scissors. I don't know why they moved to plastic wrappers, maybe it's cheaper... I can't imagine it was to increase the shelf life because these chocolate bars are so high in sugar that they are practically impervious to all microbiological activity, I certainly never had a stale Mars bar even in the seventies. So Mars, and other manufacturers, please bring back the waxed paper wrappers so that folk can enjoy your products in the proper civilised way with out distraction, properly emersed in a seeming eon of choccy yummy abstraction.

And actually, taking the above photo caused me to take a proper criticlal look at a modern Mars bar for the first time and it is striking how the plasic wrapper makes it look really cheap and tacky.

On last thing while I'm on the subject of chocolate bars: I heard new evidence on Radio 4 the other day on the 'size of Curly Whirlys' debate and how people think they used to be much bigger in the olden days. Apparently they had an old Curly Whirly wrapper on the set on Life on Mars as a prop, and apparently they could fit four of the modern Curly Whirlys in it! Another example of the decay in standards of modern choccy bars. Even before such compelling evidence, I was convinced that they were indeed much bigger before, and I wholly rejected the argument that they just seemed bigger when you were a child because you yourself were smaller... a very poor argument because I was a six foot or over strapping lad during most of secondary school. Bah.

Two cool progs on the box starting this week. One of them you will like or love (or hate) as much as you do this blog because it consists of similar rantings: for example the whinge I had on this blog about the demise of respect for content by the very TV companies that broadcast the programmes (highlighted by them always talking, practically shouting, over the outro music) was quite similar to #47... although the TV show is all TV-centric so Mars bar wrappers are unlikely to feature, alas. The show is 'Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe' on BBC4 10:30 Tuesdays... A bit like Harry Hill's TV Burp on acid... both kinds of acid come to think of it because when he gets in full swing it's like Brooker is on an acid trip whilst chewing unripe lemons -- things can get pretty sour.

[
Update: Coincidentally although Mars bar wrappers were not discussed on Screenwipe, Charlie did scathe the TV advertizing industry in show number 2 in which there was an old Mars bar advert showing the old glorious wax paper wrappers. I took a screen shot but sadly for younger readers you can't very well see how much more classy the old wrappers were, but here it is anyway:
]

The other programme to look-out for is Outnumbered on Saturday evenings on BBC1. Not that I have children of my own, but from what I have experienced visiting others, it seems to capture the random mild chaos of family life very well, where as children on other sitcoms are all a bit too smooth and organized.

Monday 10 November 2008

#50


Time passes by 'a Custard Apple at a time'...or 'a year at a time' to you John. For I only indulge in one Custard Apple per year you see, because although they are most lovely and unique, they are also so sweet and sickly that only one can be consumed per anim.

Well that time of the year has come! Today I eat the Annual Custard Apple scooping-out its sweet flesh from it's lizard like skin. This time though I observe that it is not call a Custard Apple, no, some smarty pants at Tesco has been looking in their horticultural encyclopedia because now it is labeled as a 'Cherimoya'. It seems later than last year... and indeed it is as I check back on this blog (penultimate paragraph of 36) to last year's Custard Apple Day I find it was in October.

Thankyou Custard Apple...oh great punctuator of existence... see you next year.

Friday 25 July 2008

#48

Blimey. Not done no bloggy guff for ages. Summer is always a bit mad for me because it rains slightly less than it does in the Winter so there are all those out-doory jobs to do, things like lawns selfishly just start growing like mad, so very little time for white-collar styli creativeness such as this even though this Summer has been even less impressive than the usual UK Summer... at least there's little chance of contacting painful 'Petrocelli Thumb' this year. OK so what is Petrocelli Thumb? Well it's a condition I, err, named, err, defined myself [You don't say that's not like you to make-up, I mean define, illnesses] it is pain in the main joints of your thumbs that you get from hooking them in your jeans pockets as you stroll about -- a perambulation style well suited to hot sunny days because your hands keep cooler than if you put them in your pockets but it still stops your arms flopping about a potentially uncool way. Petrocelli was a fictional character in a TV lawer/detective series of the same name, during the seventies I think. Of course the condition of Petrocelli Thumb of which I spake is only in-fact the modern day version of Petrocelli Thumb...the original version would involve pain, not in the main joints of your thumbs, but in the last joint of them (nearest the ends) because upon catching a repeat of Petrocelli the other day I noticed that his jeans were so tight (as was the custom of the day) that he could, in-fact, only manage to squeeze the tips of his thumbs in his drain-pipe pockets. He must indeed have suffered from Petrocelli Thumb though, because it would seem he was unable to lay more than a couple of bricks per week due to the pain, since that house of his that he was building out in the desert (I guess that land is cheap out there or something) never got above about waist high as far as I remember.

Anyway, while I've been away from the blogging keyboard another series of Doctor Who has finished alas, but at least they brought back one of my favourite baddies for the finale: Davros, don't you just love'im, and they had recreated him from his old 20th century self perfectly... they did not try and modernise him too much as I'd feared, he was delightfully horrible....it is a shame that the whole episode didn't follow suit with similar grittiness because instead of being delightfully horrible it was undelightfully cheesy to the max. I had to substantially boost my cheese filters before I could enjoy watching it... and it wasn't Katherine Tate that was guilty of the cheese, no, she was turning-out to be quite a good side kick towards the end and was showing great promise for the next series, and so they wrote-her-out all together, doh! Nor was the plot all that cheesy (well not the basic plot anyway) they just ladled-on the sycophantic style runny schmaltzy American cheese by the bucket load until it was almost intolerable. But I have to keep watching Doctor Who regardless of the ever increasing cheese because sometimes the episode you sit down to watch on Saturday night turns-out to be a real gem, a real dark harrowing gem. And Tennent is quite a good Doctor Who... although not my personal favourite, because as with everyone who has seen and grown-up with more than one Doctor I have a firm favourite regeneration the Doctor: played by Tom Baker. I used to be so impressed at his skill as an actor the way he he could portray this fantastic character which was simultaneously crammed full of wide eyed unpredictable eccentric enthusiasm, and, British style nonchalance. But the more I heard about Tom Baker the more I learn this is what he is/was actually like, so now I still just as impressed but on different grounds. So, given that the actor can bring so much of themselves to the part, I leave you this time with something to ponder over, and later argue about down t'pub: 'Who would make a top notch Doctor Who by more-or-less playing it as themself?' I've already though of one fantastic candidate: Brian Blessed need I say more (especially for those who saw his hosting of 'Have I got News for You' a few months ago)? [But damn-it, looking at his entry in h2g2 it seems he has already played a part in Doctor Who: 'King Yrcanos' so maybe that would exclude him even from an imaginary line-up.] But who would you choose? Thinks.


(By the way: acting tip of the week: if you ever were to audition for the part of a baddie in Doctor Who, remember to pronounce well, and emphasis much, the second 'o' in the word 'Doctor'. That 'o' is almost silent in normal spoken English, but not so in baddie English apparently. Try it and see for yourself -- probably the most effective Doctor Who baddie acting tip ever and you heard it here first (unless you're an existing Doctor Who baddie actor in which case you must have read it in some sort of 'So now Your a Doctor Who Baddie' manual))

Sunday 30 March 2008

#47

Ah, great, I just watched 'Everybody Loves Raymond' (which is on in the morning on Channel 4), I love it. It seems to get better and better. It's one of those little gems that TV companies hide by transmitting at obscure times...well 7:30am is obscure for me anyway... I think it was Hermit that mentioned watching Everybody Loves Raymond a long time back but it's not until I had purchased a televisual recording device that I was able to dine on the delights of the sitcom. And like other established US sitcoms, because each season has so many episodes (compared to our sitcoms that only have 6), the Everybody Loves Raymond feast seems to be going on and on, each episode rounded-off by a soul caressing bit of tinkly-light chill-ing-out-ing Jazz piano playing, with a soothing bit of snare drum to boot, as the outro theme tune. A tune that has been so well chosen as are many outro (and intro) TV themes tunes. The outro theme tune makes all the difference... it allows you to gently return to every day reality from the 'reality' of your favourite show leaving you with a little of it's magic or joy on which to ponder and quietly muse. The outro theme tune is like the slowly sipped cup of tea after your favourite favourite yummy cake, a way of gradually cleansing your palette holding onto the thought and the feeling of the taste and sweetness as the actual sweet taste is washed away sip by comforting sip. Now-a-days though of course it is a wonder that anyone bothers spending more than five minutes choosing a tune for their TV programme, let alone commissioning an original composition, because when the toil of their labour is finally broadcast some bastard continuity announcer always goes and talks VERY VERY LOUDLY over the majority of the outro about some VERY VERY UNIMPORTANT shite like some TOTALLY UNCONNECTED rubbishy programme that is coming-on next... and this totally destroys the moment, yanking you back to the real world in a most unpleasant way indeed. I suppose that people under about 30 have never really experienced mainstream TV where they respect the actual programmes they broadcast and don't talk-over the outro in this totally rude and un-British way, so perhaps those younger folk don't appreciate outros even when watching DVDs maybe they just skip the outro or just don't instinctively know how to use it for the benefit of a little ponder and reflection on the experience. It would be ashame if a whole generation has been robbed of the delight of the outro in that way, and the fear has to be for the diminishing numbers of people who still do appreciate a TV programme as an entire rounded entity, that programme makers will stop bothering with the humble outro all together and just roll the credit silently with no artwork ('cause that'll just get squashed to one side anyhow). And the other issue of total and utter disrespect is the volume level of the continuity announcers and the adverts (compared to the volume level of the programmes) -- it's bloody deafening, and bloody stupid. Quite a few times over the years on viewers' reply type programmes I've heard viewers' letters/emails where they complain about this, but the TV companies always give some technical excuse like 'compression'. What they mean generally by this is that they can't be arsed to sort-it-out, but... specifically, what they mean by 'compression' is that in TV programmes the programme maker (because there is a maximum volume level that can be transmitted) may make normal speech be at quite a low volume level so that when there is shouting or explosions etc. they can be at a much higher volume in comparison so that they have a more dramatic impact. Whereas advert makers generally want high drama and impact over most of the advert so they have even normal speech at the higher volume level. (A perfect example of this is the Sillette Bang advert: you'll note that the sound is no more deafening than the next advert despite the fact that the bloke is SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF HIS VOICE). So anyway, they don't want to upset the advertisers I suppose so they stick their head in the sand and hope viewers will forget about it... but the viewers don't forget about it (what with all the blood dribbling from their ears) and people just increasingly press the mute button when the adverts come-on or if they are watching something recorded they'll definitely fast-forward through them....so really it serves the TV companies right for not getting to grips with the problem as they only hurt themselves by reducing their advertising revenue (since the advertisers must be taking this into account). You don't have to be a genius to solve the whole problem: by simply making continuity announcements and adverts have a maximum volume level of 2 thirds of that of the programmes (or whatever turns-out to be the magic proportion).

Well it's all go on the TV front, Ashes to Ashes has finished but soon to start is Doctor Who on the Beeb, and according to a bill board I ambled past yesterday a programme called Chuck is to start soon on Virgin1 (the Virgin1 that's on Freeview I hope)... I've seen the pilot (or maybe it was episode one) at RussH's last week and I'm very impressed with it, I'm not sure what genre it fits into really...'action comedy'? And House has already started on Channel 5 again, where House has rather amusingly hired about 30 replacements for his old team and is gradually whittling them down as they inevitably don't manage to jump through his hoops. The House character works on two levels as regards his personality...people think of him as heartless because he just seems to care about results and has a shitty bed-side manner... but maybe he cares more than all his colleagues, maybe he cares so much that he is concentrating on the end result heartlessly in a 'cruel to be kind' way, and maybe he just lets people think he is heartless because it amuses him... or maybe he does not really know himself. It's this enigmatic personality that keeps me watching -- I'm always examining his motives and seeing what they point to, I'm always trying to work him out.

As you have seen, I'm not getting many blog entries done lately ... I notice a half finished one about the earthquake on my WP which is useless now it's so out of date. The problem is the Spring/Summer is coming so lots more to do like welding-up my 1972 Ford or mowing the lawn and stuff... so I'm going to have to change to doing small pithy blog entries over the Summer, I think, or ones that are not topical. Hmmm.

Sunday 10 February 2008

#45

I saw the latest Lynx advert on telly yesterday. For a light-hearted humourus advert it was suprisingly disturbing. It was disturbing on some deep level. Really odd. It was the inverse of that Simpsons' episode where Homer imagines himself in a chocolate world and goes round eating chuncks out of buildings and even biting chunks out of unsuspecting, still breathing and animate, wild life. Even that was ever so slightly disturbing as well as funny, perhaps because on some level it was a little glimpse of the reality of us eating animals without the slaughterhouse and the supermarket shelf to distance us from what we're actually doing. Well in this advert it is the main character that is chocholate, and this time there is some kind of strange literalization of being devoured... in the carnal sense... as one woman takes a bite out of his arse cheek as he travels, unsuspecting, on the tube, and two others women devour his ears in a goulish choco-threesome in the cinema. He even gets his arm ripped-off and stolen by a choc-thursty woman in a passing car. One can't help thinking he's a bit of a slapper and asking for it though, as he starts-off his day by ripping his own nose off his face to crush-up and sprinkle on some girls ice-creams.

Thursday 7 February 2008

#44

How was your Christmas then? Good I hope. I was going to do a pre Christmas blog entry, but I couldn't manage to write it without it sounding sanctimonious, where as all I was trying to do was to save people from their own Christmas madness by saying that perhaps we should just spend less time and money on Christmas preparations and gifts..... perhaps then we might enjoy actual Christmas a bit more when it arrives: not being warn-out and skint. If we all spent half as much and gave half of what we had saved to charity we'd all be better-off. Well, anyway, then it started to sound preachy too, because even though I'm an atheist (admittedly with occasional attacks of agnosticism) I was trying to say we ought not to loose sight of Christ because even if you don't accept his supernatural nature, as I don't, he was at least, a darn nice bloke who, to say the least, meant well... he said a fair few good things and spread a fair bit of love and good will about and did it in a largely level-headed tolerant way... and, he sacrificed himself for mankind, making him symbolic of all those people who have sacrificed themselves for mankind: like, for example, the people who went-into the melting down Chernoble reactor to contain it knowing full well it would be the death of them, or people during World War II who went on missions knowing full well there was no chance of returning but they did it to stop a powerful evil regime spreading across the globe, and I'm sure there are contemporary examples. And then and I was saying we should try and remember the Christmas message too a bit more... but then I realised I had forgotten what it actually was...it's in my head in an abstract way but I just would not beable to recite it in words...I knew it when I was at school but the relentless accelerating march of the heartless commercial Christmas has slowly drowned it out in my mind, and I guess it must be the same for other folk who don't go to church: that's one problem about being and atheist -- while you're unlikely to be the immoral being that some religious people would fear you to be, you do miss-out on some regular formal moral tuning.... even watching 'A Christmas Carol' on the telly on Christmas Eve is probably a minority occupation these days. Anyway, as it turned-out I never managed to finish the blog entry anyway because all my time got absorbed by the very over-commercial exhaustive pre Christmas preparations that I was trying to wake people up to. I think just think Christmas should be more human for people like me and more spiritual for religious folk...which I personally think, amounts to the same thing.

Sunday 3 February 2008

#43



'Thank God You're Here' is a brave effort by ITV, for a change. If you've not seen it yet, it is a Saturday night improvisation show on ITV where a contestant goes through a door into a staged scene where they will have to totally ad-lib there way through, without any prior knowledge of anything about the scene like where it is set or what it's about, or what the other characters are going to ask them or what events await them. Sometimes it falls flat... but that's what you've got to expect sometimes on an improvisation show, especially the way they have done it: on 'Who's Line is it Anyway?' (the sadly long extinct C4 improv. show) they were probably able to sharpen things-up far more with editing after the event because they had small games (and maybe they even cut-out a couple of games per show that didn't work very well), but with 'Thank God You're Here' each actor, presenter, or whoever is the contestant, have quite a long scene to endure that can't be tweaked so much in the cutting room. And you can tell it is genuine improv: the occasional look of confusion or apprehension confirms it. They have some surprising contestants too... I was a bit sceptical when they wheeled-on Fern Briton one week, I was disappointed even, although I quite like her as a presenter -- I just thought she would be a bit rubbish doing improvisation...but she was ace! And indeed she won the show. I think the best scene though was in another episode when Phil Nicol was thrown in at the deep end as a cow boy and his improvisation was excellent and so unexpected, he turned his character into a gay gold prospector and he thought of such excellent names for all the characters right on the spot.



It's ashame Channel 4 don't do 'Who's line is it anyway?' any more.

Sunday 27 January 2008

#42

A couple of people lately have expressed concern that I am eating raw leeks in my salads. Well might I point-out that after doing this for a couple of years that I am still very much alive and well. And the reasons for me doing so are well founded and logical: it is because spring-onions at this time of year (at least in my local supermarket) are not from anywhere local, not even from the European continent let alone from the UK, and believe it or not leeks taste [almost] exactly like spring onions, and I seem to be able to easily buy leeks grown in the UK at the moment. So if you want to save food miles why not give it a go? Obviously you probably don't want a whole leek (unless they are baby leeks) so just slice-up half of one or something. In actual fact leeks have a much more consistent strength than spring onions, and I'm beginning to favor them no mater what time of year as long as they are local-ish.

#41


This morning I had mince pie and lashings of double cream for breakfast. All though I felt heartily sick afterwards as the cholesterol surged through my veins it was worth it to break from the chains of conformity.

Monday 21 January 2008

#40

Well, well, well. I told you so. OK, well perhaps not you, and definitely not you, but I definitely remember telling you over there and... you, yes you, yes I remember you. Bastards. By 'you' I mean all the people during the late 80's and early 90's that poo-poo-ed central high security computer systems saying they were old hat and how we should adopt the new fad of distributed systems and PCs and all manner of free love for computers... some of you were even honest enough and came-out and said it: [stand by for my poor attempt at a scorning and belittling paraphrase] "Oow why can't I have a PC instead of a terminal so that I can have pretty screen savers and a mouse and so that I can play minesweeper and run microbloodysoftbloodyword and arrange all my little desktop icons just so and have my own wallpaper to reflect my true useless inane personality, and design my own farty little data base for my vewwy-wewy own department that I'll design so amateurishly that it'll be unusable once it has more than ten records in it and cause me to plague you actual bothered-to-learn-how-to-work-these-computery-things-properly IT professionals to fix it on a weekly basis 'till the end of fecking time, blah, blah, fecking, blah". Well serves you bastards right: I bloody told you it would lead to the break down of civilisation as we know it (well OK I didn't say that exactly but I said it would be a very very very bad idea... no actually, thinking about it, I probably did say that knowing me). Well civilisation hasn't collapsed yet, thankfully, but the lackadaisical down-loading of data onto PCs and CD etc. and general freedom for all users to use vital data in their own cockamamie local way on their local computers has gradually created a climate that has shot a fair few rockets up your deserving ****s these last few months with yet more reports of laptops going missing with many many thousands of personal details on them, this time it's even worse than when Inland Revenue or your local council have lost stuff -- this time it's the MOD: which means it contains the details of military personnel who could not only be robbed through identity fraud but actually targeted by terrorists and killed. Whether it is laptops or CDs going missing it would have been very unlikely to have happened in the 'olden days' because the databases would have been on highly secure systems in locked rooms run at C2 level security by people like me. It simply would not have been possible for anyone to have copied an entire database, for starters they would have been accessing the system via some sort of terminal which wouldn't even have had any sort of disk drive or USB port, and secondly you would have had to apply for an access level (through your manager) to even see (let alone copy) personal details, and then you would have only been able to look at one record at a time. To get a tape, disc, or whatever, of the whole of, or of part of the database would have meant coming and asking a system manager, someone like me... AND HOW FAR DO YOU THINK YOU WOULD HAVE GOT WITH SUCH A REQUEST??????? HUH???? DO I SOUND LIKE THE SORT OF PERSON THAT WOULD GIVE YOU PART OF MY DATABASE????? FECK OFF BACK TO YOUR GAME OF FECKING MINESWEEPER YOU FECKER. Now-a-days you probably go and ask one of many systems managers (some of which may even have been out-sourced for pity sake) for a copy of this or that, and security is the least of their worries, they just want to get you off their back because they have a whole host of systems to take care of, running all sorts of badly set-up operating systems which they are just 'fire fighting' to keep up and running, not to mention their myriad of applications [which we used to call programs in the olden days] and anarchic users... so they will probably just copy you a disc, job done, and not think twice about it. Well don't say I didn't warn you. And to top it all your obsession with PCs and being able to manipulate your data locally has meant that the superb systems I used to work on (VAX VMS) and which I was an expert at are now practically obsolete, or at least niche. Bastards.