Last night a DJ saved my life....well actually it was a Chinsese vegetarian buffet restaurant, as raging hunger and rising impatience (who, moi? Surely not!) at a seemingly endless wandering about nearly got the better of me, but those who were there (and PW was just as peckish as me but kept quiet) had to admit that the grub was in fact, surprisingly good! So all was well in the end, even if it took me being a bit of an arse to arrive at said conclusion. Apologies to all concerned.
That intro may be a tad cryptic for some, but if you read Phill's blog, all will become clear! Suffice to say that karma reared its head today, and made me inwardly smile. Arriving at at 1:55pm at NGH for my post-op appointment with my consultant at 2pm, I checked in at reception and was told to go and wait in the usual place. Forty five minutes later folk who had arrived after me had been seen and I hadn't been called. Something odd here methinks, so I go to the nurses' station to find out why I had not been called. "Oh" says the nurse, looking at her computer screen, "We've got you down for 3pm. Didn't the receptionist tell you that?" "No" sez I, reiterating that the letter I was sent said 2pm, and that was what I had said to the reptionist. There not being a lot I could do about it, I figured I may as well go and wait some more as it's now nearly 3 anyway.
Some ten minutes later a different nurse pokes her head into the waiting area, a corridor with plastic seats either side that is now rammed full of people, sticks a piece of paper on the wall and walks off with out a word. The paper reads "Mr Scalpel's appointments are running at least 60 minutes late, so if you do not want to wait blah blah....". That would mean sitting around until at least 4pm, probably longer given the backlog. Sod that for a game of soldiers, so, most of an afternoon wasted I headed back to work.
That bit above is only part of the karma...arriving home I re-checked the appointment letter and find that the appointment was for 3pm after all, I'd entered it on my phone calendar incorrectly. Actually made me laugh out loud, that did! I've since found out that my phone, which has to be manually adjusted when the clocks change has the annoying side effect of altering calendar appointments at the same time. So, when I changed the time back an hour on Sunday morning, it also put my appointment with Mr Scalpel back an hour too, making me turn up an hour earlier than I needed to. Really useful that, doncha think!
This is the second time this has happened recently, the first being my 10am appointment to have my cast removed after the op. Another 45 minute wait and a chat with a nurse revealed that they had it down as 1pm! Someone had lost a zero somewhere. Luckily that time they managed to fit me in there and then, so no harm done.
I theorise that time acts differently when anything to do with Government services is concerned, you have to develop a thick skin and the patience of...well, maybe not a saint, but certainly someone holier than moi!
PS - Can anyone give me a tenner, I've lorst me wallet and five of me fifteen ankle biters haven't been to McDonalds since lunchtime....and my Granny needs a heart op....and the dog's got mange...
1 Nov 2011
25 Oct 2011
Make me laugh, damn you....
Why are UK scriptwriters almost without exception incapable of creating even half decent sitcoms? It wasn't so long ago we had the bizarre genius of Black Books, Whites, and a while before that Spaced and The Office even further back, but those apart we have churned out reams of utter unfunny shite in the guise of situation comedy. Yes, I know some of you think The Office was poo too, but if you've worked in that environment I defy you not have laughed at it, albeit while viewing through the cracks between your fingers. The marvellous Green Wing doesn't count as it was a comedy drama.
The latest example being Sky 1's Spy, where Darren Boyd unwittingly finds himself working for MI5. Sounded like a good premise, they could have done anything with it, and given Boyd's rather fine CV, having been in Green Wing and Whites, and that recent semi-documentary on the Life Of Brian, playing Basil Fawlty/John Cleese to a tee, I thought I'd give it a go. Mistake. Spy is centred around Boyd's character's hugely annoying and precocious 10 year old son, who, each time he appears makes you wish that Boyd would tell him to shut the fuck up. I lasted two episodes before deleting the recorder's series link.
On the other hand, our American friends still know how to hit the old funny bone with Curb Your Enthusiasm. I never "got" Seinfeld, although I did watch it a few times, might be because I'm not a New York American Jew, but its creator Larry David came up with a real gem in CYE back in 1999, now in its eighth series. For those unaware of this show, buried very late on Sunday nights on E4 (or possibly More 4, I can't recall), LD plays a version of himself as a sort of over-moneyed LA version of Victor Meldrew with more attitude and mucho swearing, who always ends up on the wrong end of some obscure point of principle that no-one else agrees with.
LD and his mates all seem to have far too much money and time on their hands and spend their entire existence either on the golf course, eating in exclusive restaurants or going to premieres with their equally self-obsessed and horrible wives, Mrs LD excepted. There's a guy in it called Funkhouser (most of the primary characters are lapsed Jews) who has a voice like a bull elephant with a speech impediment and who is often at loggerheads with LD, but the biggest ongoing war is with best mate Jeff's wife Suzy who refers to our hero as "Larry Fucking David".
OK, you can see all the pratfalls coming but that doesn't spoil the enjoyment. Because of LD's past successes there have been a stream of guest star appearances, and the last episode featured Ricky Gervais playing a selfish arrogant total dickhead version of himself....so he wasn't acting at all then was he...:)
Favourite moment (from way back)...Larry was given the responsibility of placing an ad in the Obituary column of the local paper for his recently deceased aunt. The wording was to be something along the lines of "She was my favourite Aunt"...I'll bet you can guess what was printed!
.............................................................................................
If you've not yet watched the last ever episode of Spooks....here be spoilers...
With a sad and poignant ending the best thriller Brit TV has come up with in aeons finished on Sunday night as Ruth expired in the arms of her unrequited love, good ol' Harry Pearce. The series was pulled by the makers Kudos while still at the height of its powers, and had this been an American show you can bet your bottom dollar it would have been extended beyond the point where there was any life left in it, à la 24.
There were a couple of pointers that may mean a resurrection or a follow up show at some point, one being the reappearance of Tom (Matthew McFadden) at the behest of Harry in order to dispatch the evil Russian who was ultimately responsible for Ruth's demise, and secondly the show ended with Harry back at his desk, not retired as might have been expected. We can but hope..
...............................................................
Fades....if you've not started watching it yet, I wouldn't bother. It started well then slowly disappeared up its own whatnot. It's still OK, but only just.
The latest example being Sky 1's Spy, where Darren Boyd unwittingly finds himself working for MI5. Sounded like a good premise, they could have done anything with it, and given Boyd's rather fine CV, having been in Green Wing and Whites, and that recent semi-documentary on the Life Of Brian, playing Basil Fawlty/John Cleese to a tee, I thought I'd give it a go. Mistake. Spy is centred around Boyd's character's hugely annoying and precocious 10 year old son, who, each time he appears makes you wish that Boyd would tell him to shut the fuck up. I lasted two episodes before deleting the recorder's series link.
On the other hand, our American friends still know how to hit the old funny bone with Curb Your Enthusiasm. I never "got" Seinfeld, although I did watch it a few times, might be because I'm not a New York American Jew, but its creator Larry David came up with a real gem in CYE back in 1999, now in its eighth series. For those unaware of this show, buried very late on Sunday nights on E4 (or possibly More 4, I can't recall), LD plays a version of himself as a sort of over-moneyed LA version of Victor Meldrew with more attitude and mucho swearing, who always ends up on the wrong end of some obscure point of principle that no-one else agrees with.
LD and his mates all seem to have far too much money and time on their hands and spend their entire existence either on the golf course, eating in exclusive restaurants or going to premieres with their equally self-obsessed and horrible wives, Mrs LD excepted. There's a guy in it called Funkhouser (most of the primary characters are lapsed Jews) who has a voice like a bull elephant with a speech impediment and who is often at loggerheads with LD, but the biggest ongoing war is with best mate Jeff's wife Suzy who refers to our hero as "Larry Fucking David".
OK, you can see all the pratfalls coming but that doesn't spoil the enjoyment. Because of LD's past successes there have been a stream of guest star appearances, and the last episode featured Ricky Gervais playing a selfish arrogant total dickhead version of himself....so he wasn't acting at all then was he...:)
Favourite moment (from way back)...Larry was given the responsibility of placing an ad in the Obituary column of the local paper for his recently deceased aunt. The wording was to be something along the lines of "She was my favourite Aunt"...I'll bet you can guess what was printed!
.............................................................................................
If you've not yet watched the last ever episode of Spooks....here be spoilers...
With a sad and poignant ending the best thriller Brit TV has come up with in aeons finished on Sunday night as Ruth expired in the arms of her unrequited love, good ol' Harry Pearce. The series was pulled by the makers Kudos while still at the height of its powers, and had this been an American show you can bet your bottom dollar it would have been extended beyond the point where there was any life left in it, à la 24.
There were a couple of pointers that may mean a resurrection or a follow up show at some point, one being the reappearance of Tom (Matthew McFadden) at the behest of Harry in order to dispatch the evil Russian who was ultimately responsible for Ruth's demise, and secondly the show ended with Harry back at his desk, not retired as might have been expected. We can but hope..
...............................................................
Fades....if you've not started watching it yet, I wouldn't bother. It started well then slowly disappeared up its own whatnot. It's still OK, but only just.
20 Oct 2011
Room 101
The last remaining vestige of socialist utopia in our benighted isle as imagined by Atlee's post-war Labour Government is the very wonderful NHS, currently under threat of privatisation by stealth from out ghastly rulers. One of many nightmares fuelled by the current Tory led coalition is the end of the free at point of service NHS, something I dread should that ever happen.
Yesterday saw my third operation in just under a year on the wires and pulleys in my hands, or to use the technical term, correction of Dupuytren's Contracture. As this is my third time I now know exactly what to expect. While I cannot fault the excellent standards of the actual operation, the amount of attendant bureaucracy is mind-boggling.
When I got my first letter in early September informing me of the operation time, I noticed that they wanted me at the hospital on Wednesday 12th October by 7:15am! That would mean getting up by 6am at the latest, and those of you that know me will realise that this filled me with some dread. I am not and never have been a "mornings" person. I still regularly recall my dear old dad getting up at the rise of the sun, and wandering about the house whistling at some ungodly hour. The memory makes me smile and cringe at the same time. How can anyone be so cheerful so bloody early?!
Anyway, I digress. I phoned the appointments people and asked if they could find me a date later in the month at a slightly later time, say 9am - still quite early enough, thank you, but if not I'd take it anyway as I want the op over and done with. "OK" she said, "we'll see what we can do". A fortnight passed and no call or letter, so I ring again and was informed by answer-phone that the lady in charge of appointments was on holiday, and could I ring my consultant's secretary, which I duly did. Of course this meant explaining the situation again, and she told me that the reason the original slot was so early was so that the consultant could see me before the operation. I asked her what time he arrived in the morning, and she avoided the question - obviously a lot later than 7:15am I'll bet. I and the other patients would just end up sitting around for hours with the chill air conditioned breeze wafting through the gaps on those horrible do-up-at-the-back smock things they make you wear.
She was actually very helpful and said she'd look into why I had not been contacted and get back to me. A few days later a revised appointment letter arrived..great, they've changed the slot... for Wednesday 19th October...at 7:15am. It made me laugh that did! So I rang up the secretary again and asked what was the point of changing the date if the time slot remained the same? "Oh" she says, "well, you should have explained yourself better". I smiled to myself and bit my tongue, "Never mind" sez I , "I'll take it anyway"..."Hold on" she replied, put the phone down and came back and said "How about 10am, same day? It'll mean you won't see the consultant beforehand"". "Great" sez I "He's seen me twice already, I'm sure he knows what he's doing". Just why they couldn't have done that first time round I don't know.
I arrived at the hospital yesterday and guess what, the consultant saw me anyway, and I was under the knife within an hour. When I got back to the ward the guy in the next bed who had been operated on directly before me was moaning about having to turn up at 7:15am and then sitting around for two hours while nothing happened. Wahey!
Bureaucracy addendum - In the short time between arriving at the hospital and being put under the lights (lovely reflection of my op to watch in the light cover by the the way!) I was asked the same pre-op questions by the ward nurse, the theatre nurse (who supplied The Stone Roses on her iPod as operation music - marvellous!), and the anaesthetist, who all filled in three different versions of exactly the same form. This doesn't really surprise me, having to deal with HMRC in my day job. Anything the Government get involved in is bound to be in at least triplicate!
The cuts affecting the NHS were in evidence in the ward after the op. The discharge nurse (in the sense of leaving the ward, not messy liquids..heheh) asked if I would need any painkillers. and as I have not used any of the co-codamol prescribed after the first op for that or the second op, I told her no thanks. A bit of soreness does not necessitate medication in my opinion, unless you're a complete wuss. Medications are handed out all too freely these days if you ask me. She told me that was just as well as they had run out of the "proper" stuff (co-codamol) and could only offer me paracetamol in any case.
Despite all the endless layers of officialdom and general waiting around, the NHS is a truly marvellous thing and the coalition will rue the day their pernicious and self-serving little Health Bill becomes law.
If the Evil Coalition get their way, which is depressingly likely, the first stages of creeping NHS privatisation will soon be upon us, enabling Dave's mates to set up phoney health companies in order to make vast profits out of the rest of us, and we will all be nostalgic for the old ways of endless paper shuffling related above. There's still time to sign 38 Degrees' petition to to stop the changes, so if you haven't already signed it, get off your arse (well, hit a few keys on your keyboard) and do it now! At nearly half a million signatures one can only hope, perhaps naively I'll admit, that some notice is taken in Westminster.
Yesterday saw my third operation in just under a year on the wires and pulleys in my hands, or to use the technical term, correction of Dupuytren's Contracture. As this is my third time I now know exactly what to expect. While I cannot fault the excellent standards of the actual operation, the amount of attendant bureaucracy is mind-boggling.
When I got my first letter in early September informing me of the operation time, I noticed that they wanted me at the hospital on Wednesday 12th October by 7:15am! That would mean getting up by 6am at the latest, and those of you that know me will realise that this filled me with some dread. I am not and never have been a "mornings" person. I still regularly recall my dear old dad getting up at the rise of the sun, and wandering about the house whistling at some ungodly hour. The memory makes me smile and cringe at the same time. How can anyone be so cheerful so bloody early?!
Anyway, I digress. I phoned the appointments people and asked if they could find me a date later in the month at a slightly later time, say 9am - still quite early enough, thank you, but if not I'd take it anyway as I want the op over and done with. "OK" she said, "we'll see what we can do". A fortnight passed and no call or letter, so I ring again and was informed by answer-phone that the lady in charge of appointments was on holiday, and could I ring my consultant's secretary, which I duly did. Of course this meant explaining the situation again, and she told me that the reason the original slot was so early was so that the consultant could see me before the operation. I asked her what time he arrived in the morning, and she avoided the question - obviously a lot later than 7:15am I'll bet. I and the other patients would just end up sitting around for hours with the chill air conditioned breeze wafting through the gaps on those horrible do-up-at-the-back smock things they make you wear.
She was actually very helpful and said she'd look into why I had not been contacted and get back to me. A few days later a revised appointment letter arrived..great, they've changed the slot... for Wednesday 19th October...at 7:15am. It made me laugh that did! So I rang up the secretary again and asked what was the point of changing the date if the time slot remained the same? "Oh" she says, "well, you should have explained yourself better". I smiled to myself and bit my tongue, "Never mind" sez I , "I'll take it anyway"..."Hold on" she replied, put the phone down and came back and said "How about 10am, same day? It'll mean you won't see the consultant beforehand"". "Great" sez I "He's seen me twice already, I'm sure he knows what he's doing". Just why they couldn't have done that first time round I don't know.
I arrived at the hospital yesterday and guess what, the consultant saw me anyway, and I was under the knife within an hour. When I got back to the ward the guy in the next bed who had been operated on directly before me was moaning about having to turn up at 7:15am and then sitting around for two hours while nothing happened. Wahey!
Bureaucracy addendum - In the short time between arriving at the hospital and being put under the lights (lovely reflection of my op to watch in the light cover by the the way!) I was asked the same pre-op questions by the ward nurse, the theatre nurse (who supplied The Stone Roses on her iPod as operation music - marvellous!), and the anaesthetist, who all filled in three different versions of exactly the same form. This doesn't really surprise me, having to deal with HMRC in my day job. Anything the Government get involved in is bound to be in at least triplicate!
The cuts affecting the NHS were in evidence in the ward after the op. The discharge nurse (in the sense of leaving the ward, not messy liquids..heheh) asked if I would need any painkillers. and as I have not used any of the co-codamol prescribed after the first op for that or the second op, I told her no thanks. A bit of soreness does not necessitate medication in my opinion, unless you're a complete wuss. Medications are handed out all too freely these days if you ask me. She told me that was just as well as they had run out of the "proper" stuff (co-codamol) and could only offer me paracetamol in any case.
Despite all the endless layers of officialdom and general waiting around, the NHS is a truly marvellous thing and the coalition will rue the day their pernicious and self-serving little Health Bill becomes law.
If the Evil Coalition get their way, which is depressingly likely, the first stages of creeping NHS privatisation will soon be upon us, enabling Dave's mates to set up phoney health companies in order to make vast profits out of the rest of us, and we will all be nostalgic for the old ways of endless paper shuffling related above. There's still time to sign 38 Degrees' petition to to stop the changes, so if you haven't already signed it, get off your arse (well, hit a few keys on your keyboard) and do it now! At nearly half a million signatures one can only hope, perhaps naively I'll admit, that some notice is taken in Westminster.
30 Sept 2011
WARNING - If you're sat down reading this, you're facing the wrong way...
Two "Victor Meldrew shouting at the telly" moments this morning on BBC Breakfast got the day off to a good start pour moi.
First up was an item introduced along the lines of "Health officials are concerned about the spread of e-coli through the handling of muddy vegetables". In best Meldrew fashion I grunt at the telly "Not if the fuckwits wash their spuds and then their hands before cooking the buggers". Sure enough a minute or so later a food safety expert informs the proletariat that it'll be ok if you remember to WASH YOUR HANDS. Keerist On A Bike! Sez me, "Can I have your job, you're probably paid at least six times what I earn". Then of course I remember that this country is full of drooling clodheads who need a warning sign to be told which way to sit on a toilet.
Later we had an item on the Welsh Assembly's sensible decision to slap a 5p charge on plastic carrier bags from tomorrow in a bid to reduce the huge number that end up slowly decomposing over hundreds of years in landfill sites. Off go the Breakfast team to ask some Joneses and Evanses what they think of this. One woman's comment was "5p? That's far too much. 2p yes, but 5p?". Cue Meldrew "THAT'S THE BLEEDIN' POINT YOU NOOB. It's supposed to scare you off from using the blighters". Another environmentally challenged leek follower reckoned it was "outrageous". Twat.
..............................................................................................
Clothing/face mismatch of the day award - Walking to work this bootiful sunny morn, I espy a geezer wearing a green shirt, brown tie, sensible trousers and shoes. Nothing unusual about that, but what made me almost laugh out loud was the fact that he also sported a short but bright red Mohican haircut and enough facial accoutrements to start his own scrap metal business. Obviously on his way to work, one wonders what he does for a living - I would bet he isn't an accountant!
..............................................................................................
Apparently the South West of the country has the highest proportion of folk defining themselves as bisexual (0.9% - watch out Mike!), according to the Annual Integrated Household Survey. People get paid taxpayers' cash to find out this stuff for us, and bloody grateful we are too. We all know how vital it is to be aware of how many bat for both sides, and where they live is, don't we?
..............................................................................................
Keeping with the theme of all-round utter bollocks, you may have heard of the lg Nobel Prizes, a spoof alternative to the mainstream Nobels wherein awards are given to what seems to be completely pointless but genuine science. A comprehensive list of recent winners is here, including a study to find out why we sigh, and another to determine if a tortoise can "catch" a yawn from another, and my fave, a study that found out that "Dizziness in discus throwers is related to motion sickness generated while spinning". Really? Well I never. Essential work all of this of course!
On the other hand a fire alarm for the deaf based on the the expellation of Wasabi fumes seems, on the face of it, to be quite useful until one ponders that once awoken by the stinging odour of Wasabi (a very strong horseradish) the deaf person would probably be blinded by the tears in their eyes and end up walking straight into the fire! Marvellous...:)
.............................................................................................
BBC website news headline of the day: "Fox attacks MoD as Navy cuts loom" - that fox has some balls, and how do financial restrictions "loom"? I want to know.
..............................................................................................
This "summer" sure has been odd, bookended by April and September's sun, with barely a day over 20C in between. Ah, well, at least it's been drier than in recent years. Any of you who are moaning about the current unseasonal warm weather (yes, you) can shut up. After the coolest summer I can recall, which probably delighted the same people who are moaning now, surely you can have the good grace to allow the rest of us to enjoy a few days of decent weather before the floods followed by ten foot of snow descend on us?
Now what I need is a gratuitous pic of a bikini clad lovely or two......
.............................................................................................
And finally....from our local rag, this prospective employer must be the only one advertising who receives a number of applicants exactly equalling the number of vacancies...
First up was an item introduced along the lines of "Health officials are concerned about the spread of e-coli through the handling of muddy vegetables". In best Meldrew fashion I grunt at the telly "Not if the fuckwits wash their spuds and then their hands before cooking the buggers". Sure enough a minute or so later a food safety expert informs the proletariat that it'll be ok if you remember to WASH YOUR HANDS. Keerist On A Bike! Sez me, "Can I have your job, you're probably paid at least six times what I earn". Then of course I remember that this country is full of drooling clodheads who need a warning sign to be told which way to sit on a toilet.
Later we had an item on the Welsh Assembly's sensible decision to slap a 5p charge on plastic carrier bags from tomorrow in a bid to reduce the huge number that end up slowly decomposing over hundreds of years in landfill sites. Off go the Breakfast team to ask some Joneses and Evanses what they think of this. One woman's comment was "5p? That's far too much. 2p yes, but 5p?". Cue Meldrew "THAT'S THE BLEEDIN' POINT YOU NOOB. It's supposed to scare you off from using the blighters". Another environmentally challenged leek follower reckoned it was "outrageous". Twat.
..............................................................................................
Clothing/face mismatch of the day award - Walking to work this bootiful sunny morn, I espy a geezer wearing a green shirt, brown tie, sensible trousers and shoes. Nothing unusual about that, but what made me almost laugh out loud was the fact that he also sported a short but bright red Mohican haircut and enough facial accoutrements to start his own scrap metal business. Obviously on his way to work, one wonders what he does for a living - I would bet he isn't an accountant!
..............................................................................................
Apparently the South West of the country has the highest proportion of folk defining themselves as bisexual (0.9% - watch out Mike!), according to the Annual Integrated Household Survey. People get paid taxpayers' cash to find out this stuff for us, and bloody grateful we are too. We all know how vital it is to be aware of how many bat for both sides, and where they live is, don't we?
..............................................................................................
Keeping with the theme of all-round utter bollocks, you may have heard of the lg Nobel Prizes, a spoof alternative to the mainstream Nobels wherein awards are given to what seems to be completely pointless but genuine science. A comprehensive list of recent winners is here, including a study to find out why we sigh, and another to determine if a tortoise can "catch" a yawn from another, and my fave, a study that found out that "Dizziness in discus throwers is related to motion sickness generated while spinning". Really? Well I never. Essential work all of this of course!
On the other hand a fire alarm for the deaf based on the the expellation of Wasabi fumes seems, on the face of it, to be quite useful until one ponders that once awoken by the stinging odour of Wasabi (a very strong horseradish) the deaf person would probably be blinded by the tears in their eyes and end up walking straight into the fire! Marvellous...:)
.............................................................................................
BBC website news headline of the day: "Fox attacks MoD as Navy cuts loom" - that fox has some balls, and how do financial restrictions "loom"? I want to know.
..............................................................................................
This "summer" sure has been odd, bookended by April and September's sun, with barely a day over 20C in between. Ah, well, at least it's been drier than in recent years. Any of you who are moaning about the current unseasonal warm weather (yes, you) can shut up. After the coolest summer I can recall, which probably delighted the same people who are moaning now, surely you can have the good grace to allow the rest of us to enjoy a few days of decent weather before the floods followed by ten foot of snow descend on us?
Now what I need is a gratuitous pic of a bikini clad lovely or two......
 |
| There you go...Clapham Common apparently |
.............................................................................................
And finally....from our local rag, this prospective employer must be the only one advertising who receives a number of applicants exactly equalling the number of vacancies...
28 Sept 2011
Luke Rhinehart - The Dice Man
If you're over 30 but have not read this book, you've probably heard of it, so when I saw it on a market stall at a very reasonable £2.50 just prior to going away for a week, I thought it would make an ideal holiday read.
The basic premise concerns the author, a successful New York therapist, who, after years of living a "normal" indulgent suburban life and becoming bored shitless with it (we've all been there), decides to do something about it. He invents dice theory, where eventually all ones life choices are determined by the shake of one or more dice, the ostensible aim being to destroy the self, or ego.
Live your life at random by rule of the die - sounds mad but worth a try until you realise that the choices presented to our by now thoroughly unlikable hero are all his own in the first place. Surely a true random experience is only to be had by taking arbitrary choices that you haven't come up with yourself in the first instance?
It's a good theory, ruined by shoddy practice combined with a level of amorality that only a self-obsessed overpaid 1970s middle class American could come up with. Indeed there is an irony in attempting to destroy the self and replacing it with an existence that is the ultimate in selfism. A good half of his choices end up in some form of coitus, which after the second or third instance becomes predictable and boring.
If you get past the first expression of dice living where the protagonist decides by dice to rape his downstairs neighbour, who also happens to be his business partner's wife (and that is only the start of an amoral slide to depravity) then good luck to you, I wish I hadn't.
Oh, one other thing, this guy, who claims to be a shrink and therefore should know what he's talking about claims that the most difficult emotion to express is self-pity. Huh? That has to be a joke surely, although it's hard to tell to be honest.
Still gets 3 out of 5 for sheer brazenness!
The basic premise concerns the author, a successful New York therapist, who, after years of living a "normal" indulgent suburban life and becoming bored shitless with it (we've all been there), decides to do something about it. He invents dice theory, where eventually all ones life choices are determined by the shake of one or more dice, the ostensible aim being to destroy the self, or ego.
Live your life at random by rule of the die - sounds mad but worth a try until you realise that the choices presented to our by now thoroughly unlikable hero are all his own in the first place. Surely a true random experience is only to be had by taking arbitrary choices that you haven't come up with yourself in the first instance?
It's a good theory, ruined by shoddy practice combined with a level of amorality that only a self-obsessed overpaid 1970s middle class American could come up with. Indeed there is an irony in attempting to destroy the self and replacing it with an existence that is the ultimate in selfism. A good half of his choices end up in some form of coitus, which after the second or third instance becomes predictable and boring.
If you get past the first expression of dice living where the protagonist decides by dice to rape his downstairs neighbour, who also happens to be his business partner's wife (and that is only the start of an amoral slide to depravity) then good luck to you, I wish I hadn't.
Oh, one other thing, this guy, who claims to be a shrink and therefore should know what he's talking about claims that the most difficult emotion to express is self-pity. Huh? That has to be a joke surely, although it's hard to tell to be honest.
Still gets 3 out of 5 for sheer brazenness!
26 Sept 2011
You win some, you lose some...
Brit TV is currently showing its usual mix of populist trash, but hidden away in there are some real gems. Spooks, sadly in its final series, continues to show that Brit writers can do complex thrillers without coming across as hackneyed or laughably cheap. The big question is will Harry and Ruth finally get it on, after tip-toeing round each other for years? Probably not - my guess is one or other will get to meet their maker, just as lips are about to touch. Why is it that in the US any old bollocks, and most of it is, gets season runs of twenty plus episodes, and if even slightly successful go on for ever and a day, while over here, a series (never have liked "season", a word that should only apply to the weather, cooking, or sports) is rarely more than six episodes? Bit of a rhetorical one that, it's money of course!
Warning - very minor spoiler alert...
Last night we caught up with episode one of The Fades which shows promise as BBC Three's next Being Human. All kinds of weird shit going down here, including a teenage schoolboy hero (it is BBC Three after all) Paul (the suitably angsty Iain De Caestecker) who can see the dead, and has nightmares of impending apocalypse, his mate, who is not troubled by those social hang-ups, zombie-like creatures (SFX - very good) who can move lightning fast (I've always wondered why zombies have to move sooooo slooowwwwlllyy, which in reality renders their threat negligible), gun toting female clergy, unfortunately killed off. Female interest is supplied Natalie Dormer who played Ann Boelyn in The Tudors, who although she dies, can of course be seen by our hero and his older mentor figure. She is (was) married to a history teacher who plys his trade at our hero's school, and will obviously get involved in the shenanigans at some point soon. The shenanigans appear to involve the impending apocalypse as seen in hero's nightmare (SFX - dodgy) which obviously the unresolved dead have something to do with. You see, some of the dead disappear, not "go to heaven", merely disappear when their soul-light envelops them, others stay on earth when instead that light merely goes out, the selection being purely random in a fitting dystopian fashion.
An interesting premise, with a fair bit of gore. Marvellous!
I was going to go on about Dr Who but Phill has said it all here. The sooner the modern DW is put back in his Tardis the better in my opinion. Utter bollocks enlivened by the occasional joke, and the luvvly River Song, who everyone else seems to hate - all the more for me then!
As for foreign TV, we await the new series of Forbrydelsen with mucho anticipation. The chunky sweaters! The constant gloom! The Scandinavian introspection! The minute detail! And Sofie Gråbøl's perfect jean clad bottom is always a joy!
Warning - very minor spoiler alert...
Last night we caught up with episode one of The Fades which shows promise as BBC Three's next Being Human. All kinds of weird shit going down here, including a teenage schoolboy hero (it is BBC Three after all) Paul (the suitably angsty Iain De Caestecker) who can see the dead, and has nightmares of impending apocalypse, his mate, who is not troubled by those social hang-ups, zombie-like creatures (SFX - very good) who can move lightning fast (I've always wondered why zombies have to move sooooo slooowwwwlllyy, which in reality renders their threat negligible), gun toting female clergy, unfortunately killed off. Female interest is supplied Natalie Dormer who played Ann Boelyn in The Tudors, who although she dies, can of course be seen by our hero and his older mentor figure. She is (was) married to a history teacher who plys his trade at our hero's school, and will obviously get involved in the shenanigans at some point soon. The shenanigans appear to involve the impending apocalypse as seen in hero's nightmare (SFX - dodgy) which obviously the unresolved dead have something to do with. You see, some of the dead disappear, not "go to heaven", merely disappear when their soul-light envelops them, others stay on earth when instead that light merely goes out, the selection being purely random in a fitting dystopian fashion.
An interesting premise, with a fair bit of gore. Marvellous!
I was going to go on about Dr Who but Phill has said it all here. The sooner the modern DW is put back in his Tardis the better in my opinion. Utter bollocks enlivened by the occasional joke, and the luvvly River Song, who everyone else seems to hate - all the more for me then!
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| "Knit for me, or die..." |
15 Sept 2011
Heaveee
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| "Oh no...it's gone all heavy, maaan" |
Walking to work this morning, apropos of nowt at all, I got to thinking about the role religion has played in the shaping of the human race, and whether or not there is a God, as you do. Having been brought up in a conservative (small c) and religious family, whose church going antics ceased to appeal round about the age of fourteen, I feel have enough experience of organised religion to comment, so there!
Since time immemorial religion has been used as a cover for murder, rape and pillage in the name of a greater god, opposing sides fighting with equal conviction that their religion, or even more narrowly, their branch of it was better than the other lot's so only "we" can win. In the times Before Science (or BS) a complete and blind conviction in the preposterous teachings of one's favoured religious text was taken as a certain truth, no matter how unlikely those writings. In the case of The Bible writing about something of which there was no record hundreds of years after the supposed events being a case in point. There are people today who go under the oxymoronic banner of Creationists who still take every word literally in the face of insurmountable evidence to the contrary. In a way I admire their conviction, although it is utterly impossible to have any kind of debate with them.
With the advent of modern science when Copernicus discovered that the Earth went round the Sun and not vice-versa, small chinks in perceived tenets began to appear until, fast forwarding hundreds of years, we arrive at Darwin who proved conclusively that the human race evolved, and didn't fall out of an apple tree, modesty preserved by a fig leaf, or summat. The ridiculous nature of religious dogma was once comically summed up by Rowan Atkinson, waaay back in the Hell Sketch on Not The Nine O'Clock News where Rowan as The Devil is welcoming in the new intake to Hell..."Christians, ah yes, I'm afraid the Jews were right". Heehee.
Therefore one has to ask, is there or is there not God? It would be so easy to declare myself an atheist as there seems little evidence of a God, benign or malign, as stuff just happens, seemingly at random. Go ask the Japanese if you don't believe me. Being a "glass half full" type, I am a committed agnostic, or 100% ambivalent, who knows? I consider it is impossible to prove one way or t'other if there is, is not, or even was, however briefly, a God. Something sparked the Big Bang, maybe that was God, and it lasted for a quantum fraction of the smallest amount of time possible, but exist it did. Or not. And he certainly wasn't a bloke with a white beard sitting on a cloud.
It's fairly obvious to me that God and the Devil are simply metaphors for the two sides of human nature, a consciousness that has always strived to know why we are here and what is our purpose. Religion was born out of a need to put a framework on these unanswerable questions methinks.
Modern Christian religion seems at odds with the world it exists in and struggles for relevance, and seems to me to largely act as a salve for the conscience of those who believe. If I find a fiver in the street, or swear at a motorist it'll be ok after a few Hail Marys or whatever.
In the USA in particular there exists a small but vociferous minority of ultra right wing Christians, that bloody awful Palin woman among them, who if they ever attain the power they seek will cause havoc in the world, havoc to equal that already meted out by the equally slavering Muslim extremists and the ensuing chaos and carnage caused by the reply to their actions carried out in our names. Not that I know enough about it to comment, but there seem to be a lot of Muslim countries that still exist in a BS state, and some of the more manipulative and grudgeful religious leaders there have used that ignorance to their own black-hearted ends.
While all this was going through my head, I looked up, and lo the Wellingborough Road had parted, and Ed Milibrand was leading his people to freedom.....
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