The Cold War-Era Assault on Comic Book Culture, Revisited
The Cold War-Era Assault on Comic Book Culture, Revisited: "'For the first time, a whole generation felt like, Here's something created by other young people for me,'' Hajdu says. But McCarthyite politicians in search of new enemies, foreign and domestic, zeroed in on the corrupting influence of this cheap, unregulated entertainment."
Desmond
Oh, at long last an episode of Lost I really enjoyed for once. It pushed the Island mystery nicely along and actually even started to explain a few things - it even had a nice love story at the core of it that I found quite genuinely touching (I've long since come to generally despise most of the other characters in this show now - with the exception of maybe Hugo/Hurley (what are we supposed to be calling him now?)). Not that we didn't know from the previous big Desmond-centric story that time traveling wasn't going a big part of things somehow or other... but anyhooo
So Desmond's last name is Hume hey. Another important name in philosophy - something to do with cause and effect and perception and things like that.
(digression: I was going through a few piles of my books trying to find my copy of "A Brief Experiment With Time" by John Dunne - but that was because I had mis-remembered his name thinking it was possibly by Hume. Couldn't find it - but it's full of stuff about dreams and remembering the future and ...stuff. But I'm guessing now that it's such an obscure book that the writers won't have ever heard of it anyway.)
Lapidus is another interesting choice for a character's name: He wrote a book with the interesting title - "In Search of the Riemann Zeros: Strings, Fractal Membranes and Noncommutative Spacetimes" (I'll bet the Butler did it.)
Things I wondered: - with Minkowski becoming ill and getting nosebleeds and terribly incoherent before finally keeling over and dying - could this be what Rosseau thought of as the 'illness'? [I haven't forgotten you know - Lost writers - I and many others are keeping track] Maybe the injections - the vaccine Desmond spiked himself with daily for 5 years have been anti-radiation sickness medicine?
Penny said she knew about the Island. Oh yeeeeas. Has been looking for Desmond only in the past 2 years or so (what brought that on? Why leave it so late.) Oh and by the by - he's not going to be one of the Oceanic 6 - the creators might even kill him off just for the sheer spite of it....
Oh, and is Widmore being played by the same actor who recently was playing a naughty evil scientist type in Torchwood recently and who used to be in one of the Aussie soaps - Neighbours or Home and Away or something? Which is all - cool.
So Desmond's last name is Hume hey. Another important name in philosophy - something to do with cause and effect and perception and things like that.
(digression: I was going through a few piles of my books trying to find my copy of "A Brief Experiment With Time" by John Dunne - but that was because I had mis-remembered his name thinking it was possibly by Hume. Couldn't find it - but it's full of stuff about dreams and remembering the future and ...stuff. But I'm guessing now that it's such an obscure book that the writers won't have ever heard of it anyway.)
Lapidus is another interesting choice for a character's name: He wrote a book with the interesting title - "In Search of the Riemann Zeros: Strings, Fractal Membranes and Noncommutative Spacetimes" (I'll bet the Butler did it.)
Things I wondered: - with Minkowski becoming ill and getting nosebleeds and terribly incoherent before finally keeling over and dying - could this be what Rosseau thought of as the 'illness'? [I haven't forgotten you know - Lost writers - I and many others are keeping track] Maybe the injections - the vaccine Desmond spiked himself with daily for 5 years have been anti-radiation sickness medicine?
Penny said she knew about the Island. Oh yeeeeas. Has been looking for Desmond only in the past 2 years or so (what brought that on? Why leave it so late.) Oh and by the by - he's not going to be one of the Oceanic 6 - the creators might even kill him off just for the sheer spite of it....
Oh, and is Widmore being played by the same actor who recently was playing a naughty evil scientist type in Torchwood recently and who used to be in one of the Aussie soaps - Neighbours or Home and Away or something? Which is all - cool.
RIAA Keeps Settlement Money, Artists May Sue | TorrentFreak
RIAA Keeps Settlement Money, Artists May Sue | TorrentFreak: "Despite collecting an estimated several hundred million dollars in P2P related settlements from the likes of Napster, KaZaA and Bolt, prominent artists’ managers are complaining that so far, they haven’t received any compensation from the labels. According to a lawyer, some are considering legal action."
...
"It’s being claimed that after legal bills were subtracted from the hundreds of millions in settlements, there wasn’t much left over to hand out."
Mmmm. Now remind me, what was the RIAA originally set up to do again? Was it to make a handful of lawyers obscenely rich by sending out a flurry of frivolous, malicious and unprovable lawsuits was it? It's done that bit very well - very well indeed.
...
"It’s being claimed that after legal bills were subtracted from the hundreds of millions in settlements, there wasn’t much left over to hand out."
Mmmm. Now remind me, what was the RIAA originally set up to do again? Was it to make a handful of lawyers obscenely rich by sending out a flurry of frivolous, malicious and unprovable lawsuits was it? It's done that bit very well - very well indeed.
UK Govt. - Vote for us to punish the unemployed
There's something rather nasty going on Politics at the moment. Recently both main parties have been falling over themselves to put forward their new schemes for -well, what amounts to punishing the long term unemployed and people on incapacity benefits for being unemployed long term.
Two million 'wrongly get benefit'.
Wherein an investment banker (!!!) pulls figures out of his arse - to justify a reform of the system.
(I can't help but point out that if many people are indeed working illegally while claiming - then I wonder just how many have been forced to do so simply because the benefit rates are so low that they couldn't hope to pay their bills otherwise!
I also can't help but wonder what fee this banker got for this little job. I'll wager it was quite a bit over the minimum wage! And what does he know about things like benefit rates, social conditions, the localised economic situations, etc. etc. Surely all he knows is how to make money. [update: oh what a giveaway! "Today, on a visit to a job placement centre in Newham, I asked Purnell whether he was happy for people to get rich helping the unemployed. "Yes" he answered without so much as a blink."])
Tories plan 'work for benefits'.
Someone interviewed by the BBC site made a very good point - that they make criminals do hours of 'community service' as a punishment. What have the long term unemployed done exactly that means they should be treated in this way?
"Arbeit mach frei" anyone?
(There are already hundreds of these firms across the country and believe me, they're pretty much totally useless. I've had personal experience of them.)
To the last news piece - this is the response I wrote to the BBC website - I'll doubt they'll publish it - and even if they did it'll doubtless get buried under the massive amount of mentally-diseased comments they're bound to get from the 'Daily Mail' 'Daily Telegraph' readers calling for anyone who's been unemployed for longer than three months to be shot dead. Seriously fat people and the unemployed are seen as the last two groups in society it's acceptable to bash. So the venom really gets flowing on this issue.
Of course what is definitely going to happen shortly - is that there's going to be a massive serious economic downturn - if not an out and out recession - where many businesses are going to fail and unemployment rates are set to start going through the roof again. The only growth then will be in these private firms and they'll be bursting at the seams with new clients while the pool of jobs they try to push them into will be constantly shrinking. But no one's thought it through to start heading that one off. Tough times lie ahead.
Two million 'wrongly get benefit'.
Wherein an investment banker (!!!) pulls figures out of his arse - to justify a reform of the system.
(I can't help but point out that if many people are indeed working illegally while claiming - then I wonder just how many have been forced to do so simply because the benefit rates are so low that they couldn't hope to pay their bills otherwise!
I also can't help but wonder what fee this banker got for this little job. I'll wager it was quite a bit over the minimum wage! And what does he know about things like benefit rates, social conditions, the localised economic situations, etc. etc. Surely all he knows is how to make money. [update: oh what a giveaway! "Today, on a visit to a job placement centre in Newham, I asked Purnell whether he was happy for people to get rich helping the unemployed. "Yes" he answered without so much as a blink."])
Tories plan 'work for benefits'.
Someone interviewed by the BBC site made a very good point - that they make criminals do hours of 'community service' as a punishment. What have the long term unemployed done exactly that means they should be treated in this way?
"Arbeit mach frei" anyone?
Private firms to find people work.
(There are already hundreds of these firms across the country and believe me, they're pretty much totally useless. I've had personal experience of them.)
To the last news piece - this is the response I wrote to the BBC website - I'll doubt they'll publish it - and even if they did it'll doubtless get buried under the massive amount of mentally-diseased comments they're bound to get from the 'Daily Mail' 'Daily Telegraph' readers calling for anyone who's been unemployed for longer than three months to be shot dead. Seriously fat people and the unemployed are seen as the last two groups in society it's acceptable to bash. So the venom really gets flowing on this issue.
I've got a much better idea - rather than contract these Private firms to do anything. Let's simply not have them in the first place. Get rid of them altogether. In fact - what we should do is totally dismantle the entire DWP/DSS, sack every last person involved with it - break it up completely - sell off all it's assets, and then with the proceeds and the money saved - give every man woman and child in the this country their share of the money to do with what they want. It is, strictly speaking, our money anyway. The cannier ones will invest it and be able to live off the proceeds for the rest of their lives without having to work again. Others will be able to set up their own businesses and become self-employed. Or whatever. Sure, the less canny will probably fritter it away within a few years and we'll see a lot more people in the streets with begging bowls before long. (But given the useless and punitive schemes both the parties are proposing we'll likely to be seeing that anyway.) But it's obvious the system as it is broken, and hasn't worked for decades - it's extremely wasteful and costly in itself, and in many ways it actively, deliberately conspires to keeps people poor. (A big labour pool always means wage demands can kept low.) And every time - again and again - it totally ignores some blatantly obvious facts, such as: that there are far currently more people than there are jobs to be filled, that some locations have more industry than other areas, that too many businesses don't pay enough in wages, that in many cases the minimum wage is far, far too low to live on (which is why a great percentage of the population are now heavily reliant on 'tax credits', that the working population in this country work far longer hours than is good for them (whatever happened to the idea widely prevalent in the Sixties/Seventies that we would all be working only three to four hours a week by now?), that the education system is failing us, the whole live-to-work mentality in the UK is a form of mass insanity in itself, (another example: what exactly is the point of forcing single mothers into work just so that they are then forced to spend whatever money they earn on childcare costs?), the list goes on and on. No wonder the rates of mental illness are at an all time high...
There really needs to a be a commission studying the whole range of issues surrounding 'work' in the UK, because the various problems are a lot deeper rooted than anyone cares to admit. But instead we get the poor, the unemployed, the sick, the disabled being constantly demonised while wave after wave of half-baked private 'businesses' and 'charities' set themselves up - earning themselves nice fat commissions and nice wages patronising the disadvantaged. While giving the impression to the gullible types (the sort of person who reads the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail usually) that something is being done.
Of course what is definitely going to happen shortly - is that there's going to be a massive serious economic downturn - if not an out and out recession - where many businesses are going to fail and unemployment rates are set to start going through the roof again. The only growth then will be in these private firms and they'll be bursting at the seams with new clients while the pool of jobs they try to push them into will be constantly shrinking. But no one's thought it through to start heading that one off. Tough times lie ahead.
Torchwood ep: 'A day in the death'
To quote Catherine Tate's Nan character: 'Warra load of shit'.
Seriously, don't you need a character to be, I don't know - be actually likeable and broadly sympathic first before you start demanding that we care anything about him in a whole story?
And besides - if - because he's dead (in a way that's a complete and total rippoff of the film 'Death becomes her') he can't heal - then how is he able create new memories - because it's brain cells creating new connections that make memories. Oh, the whole thing is so stupid it's annoying. At least Martha is out of the picture for a while. Sorry, but I just don't like her. I really don't. Her teeth are too big.
Seriously, don't you need a character to be, I don't know - be actually likeable and broadly sympathic first before you start demanding that we care anything about him in a whole story?
And besides - if - because he's dead (in a way that's a complete and total rippoff of the film 'Death becomes her') he can't heal - then how is he able create new memories - because it's brain cells creating new connections that make memories. Oh, the whole thing is so stupid it's annoying. At least Martha is out of the picture for a while. Sorry, but I just don't like her. I really don't. Her teeth are too big.
thinking about modern pop combos
I'm kind of half watching 4music discussing the upcoming NME awards - and er... what is it with all these bands today - they're all the same. Guitars and floppy hair - it's a worry. It's like there's no care given to the visual anymore. I find that a bit depressing.
Anti-depressants' 'little effect'
BBC NEWS | Health | Anti-depressants' 'little effect'
Oh but they're so much cheaper and easier than oh, therapy, making sure people have a decent standard of living, have got a decent work-life balance, good food, good housing, good health, a social life, etc. etc. etc.
Oh but they're so much cheaper and easier than oh, therapy, making sure people have a decent standard of living, have got a decent work-life balance, good food, good housing, good health, a social life, etc. etc. etc.
so materialism undermines childhood?
What gets me is that they needed a special report to find this out?
Never mind though, the global recession that's just around the corner will take care of that for us.
Never mind though, the global recession that's just around the corner will take care of that for us.
The Embassy: Pataphysics Department of Reconstructive Archaeology. Repro Tableau
The Embassy: Pataphysics Department of Reconstructive Archaeology. Repro Tableau: "Anthony Aloysius St. John Hancock (1924-1968) has long been acknowledged as a truly exceptional artist, yet his actual pictorial and sculptural oeuvre continues to be unjustly neglected. Despite a certain cult following Hancock's work is still chiefly known from the bio-documentary account of his Paris years, 'The Rebel' (1960), a film whose treatment of his work is far from reverential."
Eggy Rebel, Rebel
So Rakka posts a a great picture of a painted egg she'd made of Bender.
So I make a comment about 'going to work on an egg' which means I look up the phrase and find out Tony Hancock did the first series of TV adverts for eggs - which coincidently had their anniversary last year - and they wanted to reshow some of the ads on TV - but weren't allowed to. And it being Tony Hancock I remembered him being in one of my all time favourite films - 'the Rebel' and that a while back a group of artists had recreated a few of Hancock's artworks from the film, and the irony is that a lot of them were far, far better than the artwork of the 'real' artist in the story in the movie. God those artworks were so bland and insipid. (You really have to see the movie to know what I'm talking about.) And anyway - I wanted a place to put all these bookmarks for myself. So this is how this blog entry came to be...
So there it is.
So I make a comment about 'going to work on an egg' which means I look up the phrase and find out Tony Hancock did the first series of TV adverts for eggs - which coincidently had their anniversary last year - and they wanted to reshow some of the ads on TV - but weren't allowed to. And it being Tony Hancock I remembered him being in one of my all time favourite films - 'the Rebel' and that a while back a group of artists had recreated a few of Hancock's artworks from the film, and the irony is that a lot of them were far, far better than the artwork of the 'real' artist in the story in the movie. God those artworks were so bland and insipid. (You really have to see the movie to know what I'm talking about.) And anyway - I wanted a place to put all these bookmarks for myself. So this is how this blog entry came to be...
So there it is.
5 Reasons Scifi Does Better In Movies Than In TV
(I'd have said they were as equally bad or as good but for different reasons.)
Movies Vs. Television: 5 Reasons Scifi Does Better In Movies Than In TV
Movies Vs. Television: 5 Reasons Scifi Does Better In Movies Than In TV
Paul O'Grady on the Doctor Who finale?
Whaaaa? This sounds like a -what do they call it - a spoiler-spoiler, a red herring - this can't be. Can it?
downthetubes.net news blog: Chat Show Horror?
downthetubes.net news blog: Chat Show Horror?
London mayor launches blitz on bottled water - Yahoo! News
We've long been overdue a backlash against stupid bottled water.
London mayor launches blitz on bottled water.
London mayor launches blitz on bottled water.
Lost notes 1 (Minkowski)
Incase you didn't know - quite a few of the character's names in the show have some sort of significance (I once thought this was ever so clever, back in season one that is, but I've long since realised that it's just another instance where the writers are trying to be too clever by half. Particularly when it's obvious that most of the time they can't decide if they're writing literature or soap opera.)
Anyway, Lost has been playing around with the notion of Time travel lately. They've got Desmond who traveled back in time through his own personal history and now he can see brief glimpses of the future... (nice trick.)
They've gone from having the show being about character's flashbacks to now where they're doing flash-forwards...
They've had a scene last episode where they've had a character called Faraday (yes another significant name - more blatant that one, since most of us vaguely know who Michael Faraday was) fiddling around with a tripod - scientific looking equipment - mini rockets and watches - making it clear to us there's a 31 minute difference between Island time and outside world time.
So when one of the new -and as yet unseen - characters is named Minkowski - you know it's got to mean something...
Anyway, Lost has been playing around with the notion of Time travel lately. They've got Desmond who traveled back in time through his own personal history and now he can see brief glimpses of the future... (nice trick.)
They've gone from having the show being about character's flashbacks to now where they're doing flash-forwards...
They've had a scene last episode where they've had a character called Faraday (yes another significant name - more blatant that one, since most of us vaguely know who Michael Faraday was) fiddling around with a tripod - scientific looking equipment - mini rockets and watches - making it clear to us there's a 31 minute difference between Island time and outside world time.
So when one of the new -and as yet unseen - characters is named Minkowski - you know it's got to mean something...
dead rubbish
You have got to be kidding me - Owen fighting 'Death' figuratively and literally. How lame is that?
Worse than that -the utterly annoying Owen character is still with us.
Worse than that -the utterly annoying Owen character is still with us.
Oxford to study belief in God
I can save them the money:
Scared little monkeys develop sentience and self-awareness - start to wonder where they come from. They figure out that since it's mommies and daddies getting together that make the babies - so by extension a big world needs a much bigger mommy and daddy to have made it. Some other little monkeys figure out that if they can tell stories about how the world was made - they get treated as special and the other monkeys look after them and do what they say and feed them etc. So they carry on making up bigger and better stories...
So many different stories - so many totally different creation myths... they can't possibly all be right.
We're here - so we obviously came from something/somewhere - but it's not from stories. Definitely not stories and ultimately that's all religion has to offer.
Wired News - AP News
Scared little monkeys develop sentience and self-awareness - start to wonder where they come from. They figure out that since it's mommies and daddies getting together that make the babies - so by extension a big world needs a much bigger mommy and daddy to have made it. Some other little monkeys figure out that if they can tell stories about how the world was made - they get treated as special and the other monkeys look after them and do what they say and feed them etc. So they carry on making up bigger and better stories...
So many different stories - so many totally different creation myths... they can't possibly all be right.
We're here - so we obviously came from something/somewhere - but it's not from stories. Definitely not stories and ultimately that's all religion has to offer.
Wired News - AP News
College Grad Succeeds With $25 And A Gym Bag
Let's rephrase this shall we?
A white, young, healthy, middle-class, male, college graduate plays at being 'poor' and 'destitute' for a few months as an 'experiment' - a bit of a game - with a credit card hidden in his back pocket he can use to bail him out in the case of any kind of emergency...
Mmmmm. Golly - I bet many of the people he shared the homeless shelter with and queued up for his food stamps alongside (btw is that even legal?) wished they had a emergency credit card and the knowledge they could go home to a loving supportive family when things got too tough and unbearable, or at the very least knew what they were living through was just for the one single year.
No doubt - he'll soon be writing a book, which he'll start making tv appearances to promote, which will be a best seller, then he'll probably go into politics as a republican and start lobbying that for what passes for a welfare system in the US should be totally dismantled - because, well, obviously no one needs to be poor and homeless if they've just got the right sort of can-do attitude and if they're just willing to work. He's living proof after all. *Cough-arrrogantasshole-cough*
Odd then, that if it's all that easy why isn't absolutely everyone doing it? Not to mention that - well, for a few people to be rich - there has to be an awful lot of poor people... but the Western world seems to like that way, so that won't be changing any time soon. Alas.
Now why does all this remind me of that little popular Britpop ditty that Jarvis Cocker used to sing?
Money: College Grad Succeeds With $25 And A Gym Bag
A white, young, healthy, middle-class, male, college graduate plays at being 'poor' and 'destitute' for a few months as an 'experiment' - a bit of a game - with a credit card hidden in his back pocket he can use to bail him out in the case of any kind of emergency...
Mmmmm. Golly - I bet many of the people he shared the homeless shelter with and queued up for his food stamps alongside (btw is that even legal?) wished they had a emergency credit card and the knowledge they could go home to a loving supportive family when things got too tough and unbearable, or at the very least knew what they were living through was just for the one single year.
No doubt - he'll soon be writing a book, which he'll start making tv appearances to promote, which will be a best seller, then he'll probably go into politics as a republican and start lobbying that for what passes for a welfare system in the US should be totally dismantled - because, well, obviously no one needs to be poor and homeless if they've just got the right sort of can-do attitude and if they're just willing to work. He's living proof after all. *Cough-arrrogantasshole-cough*
Odd then, that if it's all that easy why isn't absolutely everyone doing it? Not to mention that - well, for a few people to be rich - there has to be an awful lot of poor people... but the Western world seems to like that way, so that won't be changing any time soon. Alas.
Now why does all this remind me of that little popular Britpop ditty that Jarvis Cocker used to sing?
Rent a flat above a shop,
cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right,
cos when you're laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all.
You'll never live like common people,
you'll never do what common people do,
you'll never fail like common people,
you'll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do.
Sing along with the common people,
sing along and it might just get you through,
laugh along with the common people,
laugh along even though they're laughing at you,
and the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.
Money: College Grad Succeeds With $25 And A Gym Bag
Michael Gene Sullivan: Government is Not a Business
Michael Gene Sullivan: Government is Not a Business
because that's a stupid idea.
He's entirely right of course and it points up where much of the Western world has been going wrong for the past two - three decades...
Now the world is run by wealthy, selfish and self-serving, greedy idiots - we're all in deep deep trouble.
because that's a stupid idea.
He's entirely right of course and it points up where much of the Western world has been going wrong for the past two - three decades...
Now the world is run by wealthy, selfish and self-serving, greedy idiots - we're all in deep deep trouble.
'Phoo Action' to return for series
Oh.
If Phoo Crap Pants gets a series and the excellent 'Being Human' doesn't. I shan't be happy. and it'll definitely prove that BBC execs can't tell shit from Shynola.
Television - News - 'Phoo Action' to return for series - Digital Spy
By the by - Russell Tovey = fwoarh!
If Phoo Crap Pants gets a series and the excellent 'Being Human' doesn't. I shan't be happy. and it'll definitely prove that BBC execs can't tell shit from Shynola.
Television - News - 'Phoo Action' to return for series - Digital Spy
By the by - Russell Tovey = fwoarh!
5 Questions the Lost Writers Need to Answer (And Why They Won't)
5 Questions the Lost Writers Need to Answer (And Why They Won't) | Cracked.com
Here's one:
Jack: "Hi Juliette"
Juliette: "Hi Jack"
Jack: "Say Juliette - you were living with those there 'Others' for a long while weren't you?"
Juliette: "yeah, I sure was."
Jack: "So what is the deal with those guys anyway? Like, why have they kidnapped our kids and some of us? Why have they been killing some of us? What's up with all the dressing in rags and the stupid mind games? What are they up to here on this Island anyway? Tell us everything you can - OK?"
Juliette: [taking a deep breath] "well... as far as I know..."
and what happened instead? Well not much, not much at all.
Here's one:
Jack: "Hi Juliette"
Juliette: "Hi Jack"
Jack: "Say Juliette - you were living with those there 'Others' for a long while weren't you?"
Juliette: "yeah, I sure was."
Jack: "So what is the deal with those guys anyway? Like, why have they kidnapped our kids and some of us? Why have they been killing some of us? What's up with all the dressing in rags and the stupid mind games? What are they up to here on this Island anyway? Tell us everything you can - OK?"
Juliette: [taking a deep breath] "well... as far as I know..."
and what happened instead? Well not much, not much at all.
IGN: IGN's Top 50 Lost Loose Ends
IGN: IGN's Top 50 Lost Loose Ends
Although there are plenty more unanswered mysteries on this show. Lostanswers blog - counts 226 - so far. I'm guessing most of them will never be answered satisfactorily - and the writers are hoping we'll just forget most of them... as they constantly layer a few more on for good measure.
Actually maybe it's possible the creators were counting on the show being canceled before the end of it's run - so they'd never have to tie up this many loose ends - and figured the show would live on in people's memories (and on DVD box sets) as they would drive themselves crazy trying to figure out what was supposed to be going on. When in fact all the writers were just winging it from day one, there is no real hard structure. That would make more sense than anything else. A bit like how David Lynch in 'Twin Peaks' never wanted to reveal who murdered Laura Palmer - and wanted the show to go on for years...
Although there are plenty more unanswered mysteries on this show. Lostanswers blog - counts 226 - so far. I'm guessing most of them will never be answered satisfactorily - and the writers are hoping we'll just forget most of them... as they constantly layer a few more on for good measure.
Actually maybe it's possible the creators were counting on the show being canceled before the end of it's run - so they'd never have to tie up this many loose ends - and figured the show would live on in people's memories (and on DVD box sets) as they would drive themselves crazy trying to figure out what was supposed to be going on. When in fact all the writers were just winging it from day one, there is no real hard structure. That would make more sense than anything else. A bit like how David Lynch in 'Twin Peaks' never wanted to reveal who murdered Laura Palmer - and wanted the show to go on for years...
Bare Bones Lost
So, there was this aeroplane crash. The plane - Oceanic 815 – already thousands of miles off course - split in two over an island and some of it's passengers crash landed onto this rather idyllic tropical island. The survivors don't know where they are – and no rescue party has ever come to relieve them and they're very much cut off from the rest of the world. Through a series of flashbacks (oh so many, many flashbacks) we have gotten to see that each of the main characters have had somewhat complicated and colourful lives and that a lot of their paths have previously criss-crossed each others to varying degrees - in one case unknown to themselves at least two of them are directly related as half brother and sister. But as each and every 815 survivor seems so doggedly reluctant to discuss anything of their life history to any other person – these coincidences are only ever known to the viewer. But, to be fair, much of the characters have a lot to hide: “hi, I'm on the run for murdering my alcoholic wife-beating father”, “hi, I'm a con man”, “hi, I used to torture people for a living.” etc. The Island itself seems to possess various certain mysterious powers – one in particular seems to be that of super-natural healing properties. It transpired very early on that one survivor had been wheelchair-bound prior to landing on the island but now is able to to walk. Another character had a diagnosis of terminal cancer but now feels herself completely healed. Another character was a heroin addict but was able to easily overcome their addiction with no ill-effects (cold turkey) whatsoever. Other characters having sustained quite serious injuries (usually knife or gunshot wounds) yet have been fully healed within a matter of days. However, the implication is that such healing is only in operation so long as the individuals concerned don't leave the island. This would go some way to explain why some – if not most, of the survivors have been rather half-hearted if not downright reluctant in their efforts to escape the island. All this despite the fact at any moment they could be eaten by a stray polar bear – or killed by a strange other-worldly monster made out of black smoke, or shot or stabbed or kidnapped by the Island's rather crazy original inhabitants, etc. Unnatural healing properties aside - once someone is dead – they remain dead – although this doesn't stop them appearing in visions to other individuals, and this happens quite often. People having very intensely vivid hallucinations is another aspect of the island's strange powers.
As already mentioned there are other people on the Island – known as 'the Others' – a highly secretive bunch – when they were first seen they liked to play 'dress up' wearing raggedy clothing and walking around barefoot – giving the impression that they had been on the Island a long time (and indeed they have) as survivors themselves – only it eventually became evident that the bulk of them have been living in fairly well-appointed comfort with all the modern suburbanite conveniences within a heavily protected and well hidden village. These Others are all extremely inscrutable and are totally incapable of giving any kind of a straight direct honest answer to any question asked of them, indeed, they could be said to all be pathological liars, are arch manipulators, emotional blackmailers and love nothing better than to play complicated psychological mind games and know far, far too much about all the survivors' personal histories. It's been established they even have extensive files on each survivor. They are also all exceptionally healthy and possess near super-human strength. One particular 'Other' has remained un-aged, looking exactly the same now as he did 20 or so years ago. (Unless he has been time-traveling. Which could be a factor.) It turns out that some of these people have been nipping on and off the Island to the outside world quite regularly via a submarine. Sometimes on recruitment drives to bring in new people to aid their cause – whatever that may eventually prove to be. Two members of these 'Others' infiltrated themselves among the 815 survivors (two because there were two groups of survivors when the plane split – one half landed inland – the other on the beach) – masquerading as survivors themselves to gain intelligence about them and help facilitate the kidnapping of certain members of the 815 – most particularity the children. The 'Others' are particularly interested in children and pregnant women. Apparently they have serious issues regarding fertility, for some reason women tend to die whilst giving birth on the island. The Island harbours a number of near derelict science research stations – originally established sometime in the early 1980s or mid 1970s by an organisation known as the 'Dharma Initiative'. Each station was dedicated to the in-depth research of a particular discipline – zoology, social observation, physics, medicine -etc. most are now in various stages of abandonment, while some are still in occasional use by 'the others'. One particular station was maintained by an individual -Desmond who was a survivor of boat crash onto the Island and whose sole purpose was to input a particular series of numbers into a computer every 108 minutes. He did this all alone for about five whole years, up until the station was broken into by a handful of the 815 survivors, who in a face-off with Desmond also managed to accidentally break the all-important computer, at which point he broke out of the station and ran away into the depths of the Island leaving the task of inputting the numbers up to them. Luckily one of the 815ers managed to repair the computer just in time. It was some weeks later - during the course of one episode (a season finale) when these numbers weren't input at the appointed hour – the entire station imploded. At the same time Desmond - who had since returned after some time away - activated some sort of 'fail-safe' mechanism. So far the consequences of this station's destruction, aside from the Island shaking violently and the sky turning purple for a few moments, is that the Island has suddenly become 'visible' to the outside world - it has also resulted in the Desmond character able to time travel back along his own life history and he is now has the ability to see brief flashes of future events. This may link up in some way to the newly established fact that in some peculiar way the Island exists out of normal time. Harking back to the Dharma initiative for a moment around ten or so years ago nearly all of the original staff of Dharma were murdered via a lethal gas bomb attack by the 'Others' – one person - Ben, who was the son of one of the Dharma workmen is now the leader of 'the Others'. Other note-worthy items:
A more recent addition is a invisible character called Jacob, who's supposedly the 'real' leader of the Others. Ben being the intermediary who claims to be able to see and hear him. That Jacob isn't a figment of Ben's warped imagination is that two other survivors have had brief momentary glimpses of him. Jacob 'lives' totally alone in a rundown shack – which is surrounded by a ring of grey ash – and the whole shack can apparently disappear and relocate and reappear at will.After writing this I've come to feel we, the audience are like the crash survivors – being presented with a barrage of incomprehensible circumstances, a steady diet of red herrings and MacGuffins and that the writer/creators are like 'the Others' – hell bent on withholding vital information, never giving out a straight answer to anything and who like nothing better than playing ridiculously complicated mind games on us.
As already mentioned there are other people on the Island – known as 'the Others' – a highly secretive bunch – when they were first seen they liked to play 'dress up' wearing raggedy clothing and walking around barefoot – giving the impression that they had been on the Island a long time (and indeed they have) as survivors themselves – only it eventually became evident that the bulk of them have been living in fairly well-appointed comfort with all the modern suburbanite conveniences within a heavily protected and well hidden village. These Others are all extremely inscrutable and are totally incapable of giving any kind of a straight direct honest answer to any question asked of them, indeed, they could be said to all be pathological liars, are arch manipulators, emotional blackmailers and love nothing better than to play complicated psychological mind games and know far, far too much about all the survivors' personal histories. It's been established they even have extensive files on each survivor. They are also all exceptionally healthy and possess near super-human strength. One particular 'Other' has remained un-aged, looking exactly the same now as he did 20 or so years ago. (Unless he has been time-traveling. Which could be a factor.) It turns out that some of these people have been nipping on and off the Island to the outside world quite regularly via a submarine. Sometimes on recruitment drives to bring in new people to aid their cause – whatever that may eventually prove to be. Two members of these 'Others' infiltrated themselves among the 815 survivors (two because there were two groups of survivors when the plane split – one half landed inland – the other on the beach) – masquerading as survivors themselves to gain intelligence about them and help facilitate the kidnapping of certain members of the 815 – most particularity the children. The 'Others' are particularly interested in children and pregnant women. Apparently they have serious issues regarding fertility, for some reason women tend to die whilst giving birth on the island. The Island harbours a number of near derelict science research stations – originally established sometime in the early 1980s or mid 1970s by an organisation known as the 'Dharma Initiative'. Each station was dedicated to the in-depth research of a particular discipline – zoology, social observation, physics, medicine -etc. most are now in various stages of abandonment, while some are still in occasional use by 'the others'. One particular station was maintained by an individual -Desmond who was a survivor of boat crash onto the Island and whose sole purpose was to input a particular series of numbers into a computer every 108 minutes. He did this all alone for about five whole years, up until the station was broken into by a handful of the 815 survivors, who in a face-off with Desmond also managed to accidentally break the all-important computer, at which point he broke out of the station and ran away into the depths of the Island leaving the task of inputting the numbers up to them. Luckily one of the 815ers managed to repair the computer just in time. It was some weeks later - during the course of one episode (a season finale) when these numbers weren't input at the appointed hour – the entire station imploded. At the same time Desmond - who had since returned after some time away - activated some sort of 'fail-safe' mechanism. So far the consequences of this station's destruction, aside from the Island shaking violently and the sky turning purple for a few moments, is that the Island has suddenly become 'visible' to the outside world - it has also resulted in the Desmond character able to time travel back along his own life history and he is now has the ability to see brief flashes of future events. This may link up in some way to the newly established fact that in some peculiar way the Island exists out of normal time. Harking back to the Dharma initiative for a moment around ten or so years ago nearly all of the original staff of Dharma were murdered via a lethal gas bomb attack by the 'Others' – one person - Ben, who was the son of one of the Dharma workmen is now the leader of 'the Others'. Other note-worthy items:
Aside from the Island's healing properties, and that it's somehow being hidden from the rest of the world, it also harbours some sort of living entity which is either composed of, or appears in the form of black smoke -(affectionately known by Lost fans as 'Smoky') – we've seen it drag off and kill one of the pilots of Oceanic 815, we've seen it drag one of the major characters along the ground at great speed and nearly drag him underground, we've seen it repelled by some sort of high tech sonic death-dealing security fence, we've also seen it approach another character and 'read' that character's mind in the form of brief flashes of that person's personal history. There are also vague implications that it can take on the form of deceased people who are known personally to other characters and talk to them.
A more recent addition is a invisible character called Jacob, who's supposedly the 'real' leader of the Others. Ben being the intermediary who claims to be able to see and hear him. That Jacob isn't a figment of Ben's warped imagination is that two other survivors have had brief momentary glimpses of him. Jacob 'lives' totally alone in a rundown shack – which is surrounded by a ring of grey ash – and the whole shack can apparently disappear and relocate and reappear at will.After writing this I've come to feel we, the audience are like the crash survivors – being presented with a barrage of incomprehensible circumstances, a steady diet of red herrings and MacGuffins and that the writer/creators are like 'the Others' – hell bent on withholding vital information, never giving out a straight answer to anything and who like nothing better than playing ridiculously complicated mind games on us.
sigh
Disney's home of the future
Disney Revives 'House of the Future': "The new home will be made of wood and steel and finished in muted browns and beiges"
Oh dear sweet Zeus will this Decade of the bland and the beige ever end? Will we ever see colour again? *Quietly weeps*
Oh dear sweet Zeus will this Decade of the bland and the beige ever end? Will we ever see colour again? *Quietly weeps*
Phoo Action
Oh.
Well this is pretty dreadful. When it comes to live action adaptations it's clearly apparent that poor Jaime Hewlett just can't find anyone to do his stream-of-consciousness fantasy cartoon world justice. IE this is, if anything, worse than that cringe-making cinematic embarrassment that was the Tank Girl movie. Something I would have thought impossible. But no, here it is moving right before my eyes – something far, far worse.
Everything is so stagy. Why are all the camera angles so flat and boring? The editing and cutting so drearily pedestrian. None of this depicts the manic energy of a Hewlett strip. And where did they find those two totally charisma-less lead actors from? In fact none of the other young actors can barely act at all – it's painful to watch. Not that matters too much when they've haven't got any decent dialogue to work with. There's no wit, no decent jokes, nothing. It isn't even up to the level of pantomime. I'm getting the sense that no one working on this show really had their heart in it. No one's putting that little bit extra into it to raise it above the mediocre.
The costumes of the Freebies are quite good. I suppose.
It's not as if it's impossible to do this low budget – high fantasy – highly imaginative comedy drama style – after all The Mighty Boosh have done exactly that and very successfully for four seasons now.
Actually what this show desperately needs is Joss Whedon lessons – it needs a bit of Buffy energy. Better fight scenes, better editing, better scripts, wit, glamour, – in short a complete overhaul. If it wasn't so geared to older teenagers and consequently had an adolescent sexuality to it meaning it can only be put on after the watershed – it should be shunted off to early morning CBBC where it can be quietly left to fade into a well deserved obscurity.
update:
I've just found out it was directed by Euros Lyn - of Doctor Who fame - he must be running on empty here. And written by Jessica Hynes - of Spaced. So it's doubly puzzling to me why it's so bad and so lackluster. But then again - maybe not. She seems to be better suited to writing gentler comedies now - like she did with her play 'Learners'. She should have been better writing this with her ex-comedy partner Simon Pegg who would have cranked up the jokes and the frenetic energy levels this show should have had.
Well this is pretty dreadful. When it comes to live action adaptations it's clearly apparent that poor Jaime Hewlett just can't find anyone to do his stream-of-consciousness fantasy cartoon world justice. IE this is, if anything, worse than that cringe-making cinematic embarrassment that was the Tank Girl movie. Something I would have thought impossible. But no, here it is moving right before my eyes – something far, far worse.
Everything is so stagy. Why are all the camera angles so flat and boring? The editing and cutting so drearily pedestrian. None of this depicts the manic energy of a Hewlett strip. And where did they find those two totally charisma-less lead actors from? In fact none of the other young actors can barely act at all – it's painful to watch. Not that matters too much when they've haven't got any decent dialogue to work with. There's no wit, no decent jokes, nothing. It isn't even up to the level of pantomime. I'm getting the sense that no one working on this show really had their heart in it. No one's putting that little bit extra into it to raise it above the mediocre.
The costumes of the Freebies are quite good. I suppose.
It's not as if it's impossible to do this low budget – high fantasy – highly imaginative comedy drama style – after all The Mighty Boosh have done exactly that and very successfully for four seasons now.
Actually what this show desperately needs is Joss Whedon lessons – it needs a bit of Buffy energy. Better fight scenes, better editing, better scripts, wit, glamour, – in short a complete overhaul. If it wasn't so geared to older teenagers and consequently had an adolescent sexuality to it meaning it can only be put on after the watershed – it should be shunted off to early morning CBBC where it can be quietly left to fade into a well deserved obscurity.
update:
I've just found out it was directed by Euros Lyn - of Doctor Who fame - he must be running on empty here. And written by Jessica Hynes - of Spaced. So it's doubly puzzling to me why it's so bad and so lackluster. But then again - maybe not. She seems to be better suited to writing gentler comedies now - like she did with her play 'Learners'. She should have been better writing this with her ex-comedy partner Simon Pegg who would have cranked up the jokes and the frenetic energy levels this show should have had.
Jamie Oliver is full of **it
Bizzare image from Jamie Oliver's 'Eat to save your life' tv show the other week that is now (god help me) etched into my mind forever:
Getting a member of the audience to bring in a -was it a day or a week's worth of his pooh. Jamie then got staff to wheel in what would be a whole year's worth of pooh for that person, it just filled a single wheel barrow and then compared that with a whole years worth of pooh for someone in some good-forsaken country who purportedly ate a better diet. It nearly filled the large studio.
The gist being that in the developed Western world we're not poohing enough and it's giving us bowel cancer.
So Jamie was basically saying we should be poohing a lot, lot more. I don't think our sewage system - which is already falling apart at the seams - could cope.
Getting a member of the audience to bring in a -was it a day or a week's worth of his pooh. Jamie then got staff to wheel in what would be a whole year's worth of pooh for that person, it just filled a single wheel barrow and then compared that with a whole years worth of pooh for someone in some good-forsaken country who purportedly ate a better diet. It nearly filled the large studio.
The gist being that in the developed Western world we're not poohing enough and it's giving us bowel cancer.
So Jamie was basically saying we should be poohing a lot, lot more. I don't think our sewage system - which is already falling apart at the seams - could cope.
Torchwood - Review - S02E04: 'Meat' - Digital Spy
A nice review - so I don't have to. I certainly liked it better than the past two episodes.
I'll only add that I didn't care much for Gwen's shouting fit and storming around at the end of the episode. After all why bother erasing Rhys' memory anyway? This is a world that has had a spaceship crash into Big Ben - a giant spaceship hover over London one Christmas, has had ghostly Cyberman appear all over the world and Daleks killing people in canary Wharf - and in Cardiff has had a giant uber demon whose shadow killed hundreds in the streets? And even little old ladies in the street know about Torchwood. A space alien whale seems to pale against all that... all that isn't general knowledge is that have their secret base in the middle of Cardiff. That's about all.
I'll only add that I didn't care much for Gwen's shouting fit and storming around at the end of the episode. After all why bother erasing Rhys' memory anyway? This is a world that has had a spaceship crash into Big Ben - a giant spaceship hover over London one Christmas, has had ghostly Cyberman appear all over the world and Daleks killing people in canary Wharf - and in Cardiff has had a giant uber demon whose shadow killed hundreds in the streets? And even little old ladies in the street know about Torchwood. A space alien whale seems to pale against all that... all that isn't general knowledge is that have their secret base in the middle of Cardiff. That's about all.
shredded
I happen to like bitesize shredded wheat - have done so for years. But their commercial for it drives me insane. A selection of different women (I had no idea this was a cereal designed exclusively for women - this was news to me) seem totally bemused by this cereal for consisting of nothing but wheat. No added sugar - no nothing - just wheat. Er, but you HAVE TO ADD MILK AND SUGAR TO IT FOR IT TO BE EDIBLE YOU MORONS! Otherwise it's straw you're eating - and you couldn't get through a bowl of it dry. It's also pretty revolting if you eat it without sugar too - unless you like the taste of raw cardboard.
Repossession Repossession Repossession on ITV 1
Ah. At last. So now I finally get why over the years I've seen people around me getting seemingly richer and richer - while I've struggled on in at the same level of poverty. Not when I couldn't see the UK making much of anything - (isn't nearly everything in the world made in China now?) - even 'Brit pop' is a distant memory. We don't even have Saddam Hussein to sell arms and devices of torture to anymore. So apparently most people have been living off credit from them borrowing against their vastly over-valued houses. Which they're paying for - with a mortgage - but, but isn't a mortgage a type of loan in itself? Surely no one really actually owns their home until they've paid that off do they? Oh. So in fact they're borrowing against something they're already borrowing to pay for something they don't yet own...
Human beings are f*c*ing morons aren't they?
You see, I've lived through recession after recession through the Thatcher boom-bust-boom-bust years - and I've always secretly preferred the recessions because they've been the periods when people have behaved a lot less stupidly than they normally do. For the past decade or more I've seen the general population behave very stupidly like they've never done before. It's been frightening.
Repossession Repossession Repossession
Bursting the House Price Bubble
UK borrowing is worst in 10 years.
UK sees decline in factory output.
Bleak prospects for UK job market.
Human beings are f*c*ing morons aren't they?
You see, I've lived through recession after recession through the Thatcher boom-bust-boom-bust years - and I've always secretly preferred the recessions because they've been the periods when people have behaved a lot less stupidly than they normally do. For the past decade or more I've seen the general population behave very stupidly like they've never done before. It's been frightening.
Repossession Repossession Repossession
Bursting the House Price Bubble
UK borrowing is worst in 10 years.
UK sees decline in factory output.
Bleak prospects for UK job market.
Costs set to rule out register of fingerprints
They've already quietly given up on iris scans. Could it be that it's sllllllloooooowwwwly dawnin on them that finger printing and iris scanning every last individual in the country is going to prove a vastly expensive, awkward, and difficult thing to achieve?
Nah, can't be - that would presume a certain level of intelligence and common sense which Governments throughout history have never had.
Costs set to rule out register of fingerprints
Nah, can't be - that would presume a certain level of intelligence and common sense which Governments throughout history have never had.
Costs set to rule out register of fingerprints
Watchng 'Space 1999'
I always think:
'With all those polyester costumes and all that white plastic furniture they're surrounded by - don't they get constant shocks from static electricity?'
Space 1999
'With all those polyester costumes and all that white plastic furniture they're surrounded by - don't they get constant shocks from static electricity?'
Space 1999
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