- 4th
- Get the hell outta my car, old man! → Fans of shutting down the NHS are often visited in their sleep by troubling visions of old and infirm people dying in the streets, but I’ve found the perfect antidote! “About 75 white pupils walked out of the Central High School here after eight Negroes went in to-day, and one boy hung a straw effigy of [...]
- Kes at the theatre → The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester is pretty nice. It’s a theatre - as in, a real live people-on-the-stage theatre - built inside the old stock exchange building. I went there last week. First a word about the prices. It’s around 20 pounds for a ticket, more for better seats, less for worse. However! If you’re [...]
- 5th
- Screen Select → I just signed up for Screen Select, the DVD rental company, and did their Instant Recommendations bit. Based on my year of birth and actor preferences, it recommended Bitter Moon: “An erotic drama which explores the depths of sexual perversion and experimentation…” It’s like it read my mind! To its credit, Jason and the Argonauts was second [...]
- 6th
- Drugs → “Tories take tough line on crime”: “Children need to know that it is not cool to use drugs - it is stupid, it is dangerous, it is illegal.” Stupid, dangerous and illegal sounds like a pretty good definition of cool to me. On the other hand, that would make a War on Drugs cool…
- 15th
- Cottage Cheese and Beetroot Sandwich Recipe → Somewhere deep in Market Zone 1486, codename “UK”, two consumers simultaneously increased local demand for nutritional sustenance. They entered a joint-venture agreement with the aim of raising their purchasing power by pooling resources and buying in bulk. Acting in an official capacity, they headed for the local consumer-oriented medium-quantity purchase warehouse known as “TES CO”. After [...]
- 16th
- Brain Implants! → Brain implants. Seems like non-quadriplegic people would have a good use for these too. Imagine being able to turn off your bedside alarm with a mere thought, rather than the impossible strain of reaching across with your real arm.
- More fear mongering → Panorama: Your child’s been stabbed is a title you might remember Troy McClure from. I’m less worried about knives than about sentences like this: Another girls in the group called Sofia, said: “They might think oh, I’m might not going to use it. Well, most people wouldn’t really care to use it, cos it’s like it [...]
- 21st
- Geometry renamed → Plus the pun of the year
- 26th
- Legends dropping at alarming rate → Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ronald Reagan, Ray Charles, Jerry Goldsmith, Francis Crick, Brian Clough, Rodney Dangerfield, Jacques Derrida, Christopher Reeve, John Peel. Look at all these superstars dying this year! Who could possibly be next? Prediction: JFK gets elected on November 2nd, then assassinated on November 22nd by the military-industrial-confectionary complex. I went to the wikipedia to look up [...]
- 27th
- Presenting your new reality → Big Brother to build Truman Show village. Celebrity contestants will occasionally appear to raise the quota. But the main group of contestants will remain “for decades” according to Mr Laux. People trapped in a studio for decades? It’s already happened. 4 episodes of Coronation Street per week mean that the actors effectively become their characters. I remember [...]
- 28th
- Mini-reviews of recent watchings → JFK: pretty good, although anyone wanting enlightenment would do well to note that this is not filed in the Documentary category. Natural Born Killers: yay! This film is lots of fun. I love the sets filled to the brim with chaos and detritus and junk, which you have to see a Terry Gilliam film to top. Sky [...]
- 29th
- An evening with Iain M. Banks → Last Thursday I went to see Iain M. Banks at Waterstones. He read from his new book, The Algebraist, then took an hour or so of questions from the audience. I guess I should write up my experience for the benefit of fans who are unable to attend any of the locations on his UK [...]
- 30th
- See it before the americans! → Here’s a capitalistic condundrum: a local radio advert for Saw said “See it before America!”. Merkinbashing is big business now. Why oh why does the government insist on all these crippling regulations that are holding back the emerging Hate industry?
