- Condemn:: mercy
- Promiscuous:: shag
- Pro-life:: murderous zealot
- Mona Lisa:: Big Fat Pizza
- Crown:: of thorns
- Mumble:: pardon?
- Hack:: journalist
- Diet:: bugger off
- Introduction:: let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...
- Latin America:: fucked by American foreign policy
Monday, April 5, 2004
This week's word association from Subliminal:
Had a very long walk all the way from the village of Dirleston along the beach until we ended up at North Berwick. Wonderfully schizophrenic Scottish weather - one minute warm and very sunny then dark, glowering clouds and driving rain and wind then back to sun. At one point we could see the black rain clouds moving down the coast towards us and below them a wavering shape, almost like enomrous, miles-high black net curtains. They were literally sheets of rain coming from the black clouds. Wind whipping up the waves, glowering clouds - it was like something from a Turner seascape. It did bring out a gorgeous rainbow over the Bass Rock at North Berwick however, although it's probably not overly clear here.
The storms did however claim casualties. We realised from the debris that a ship had been wrecked: here washed up on the foaming shore is the remains of the Captain's Log :-)!!!!
Saturday, April 3, 2004
Singing Samurai
Caught Kitano's version of Zatoichi this week. An updated take on an old series of B-movies form Japan, it was an utterly excellent couple of hours. Funny but serious in places, the tale of the bleach-blonde blind masseur wandering from town to town who is actually a deadly Samurai (his sword is in his cane) is essentially the Japanese answer to 60s/70s Spaghetti Westerns.
Sure the CGI for the fountains of blood may be a bit ropey, but the whole thing was so much fun (and no wire-Fu work either, thank you). And then there's the song and dance routine... Singing and dancing villagers, evil henchmen ruining the innocent village, a wandering Ronin, a blind man who is an unstoppable killing machine and killer Gieshas - I ask you, what more can you ask for in a movie????
Although from a distance the hair does make him look a little like Eminem.
Caught Kitano's version of Zatoichi this week. An updated take on an old series of B-movies form Japan, it was an utterly excellent couple of hours. Funny but serious in places, the tale of the bleach-blonde blind masseur wandering from town to town who is actually a deadly Samurai (his sword is in his cane) is essentially the Japanese answer to 60s/70s Spaghetti Westerns.
Sure the CGI for the fountains of blood may be a bit ropey, but the whole thing was so much fun (and no wire-Fu work either, thank you). And then there's the song and dance routine... Singing and dancing villagers, evil henchmen ruining the innocent village, a wandering Ronin, a blind man who is an unstoppable killing machine and killer Gieshas - I ask you, what more can you ask for in a movie????
Although from a distance the hair does make him look a little like Eminem.
Grass roots power for Scotland
The wee Scottish village of Fintry has embraced renewable energy by striking a deal with a company building a wind farm and agreeing to have an extra turbine built just for the village. Nice to see both renewable energy being so successfull and grass-roots level power (sorry, poor pun) for the people it affects working so well together, especially in a week where the old dream of the future, nuclear power, took a step closer to closure with Dounray, one of the original batch of UK nuclear power stations, closing down sections in preparation for eventual closure in a decade or two.
The wee Scottish village of Fintry has embraced renewable energy by striking a deal with a company building a wind farm and agreeing to have an extra turbine built just for the village. Nice to see both renewable energy being so successfull and grass-roots level power (sorry, poor pun) for the people it affects working so well together, especially in a week where the old dream of the future, nuclear power, took a step closer to closure with Dounray, one of the original batch of UK nuclear power stations, closing down sections in preparation for eventual closure in a decade or two.
Exterminate
The news yesterday that the diminutive gnome Michael Grade is to be appointed as the new chairman of the BBC seemed popular with the coproration's staff, but will, I fear, spark concern among British SF fans. For it was Grade, many years ago when Controller of BBC1 who ulled the plug on Doctor Who, then the longest running SF show in the world. No, shorty, we haven't forgotten you!
Now I am the first to admit the show needed some serious re-working and updating at the time - despite the fact it brought in more in merchandising sales than it cost to make the BBC spent little money or resources on this incredibly well-loved show and ithad deteriorated. Putting it up against new mroe popualr shows on other channels didn't help much either. However, Grade made it pretty clear that he scrapped the show because he hated it. That's all - no good reasons as a broadcaster or programme maker, just that he didn't like it. And he thought Who fans were a bit sad. This form the man who promoted bloody Eastenders and foisted hackneyed scripts of cliched Cockneys on the nation each week.
An appearance on Paul Merton's excellent Room 101 (where people are allowed to argue for some of the things they hate most to be destroyed) confirmed this when the issue of cancelling Who came up again and he just re-iterated that he hated it and thought the fans (some of whom had turned up in the audience in costume) were sad. Now it strikes me if you have a product that is immensely popular round the world, which generates lots of money for you and has in fact become a British institution which, long after cancellation, people still show great interest in (book sales, DVD sales and new stories on the BBC's own web pages brought in massive numbers of hits) then as the chief of that company, regardless of your personal taste, you'd be happy to support it and make it grow? Wouldn't you be happy to have such enthusiastic fans and supporters? His re-appointment to the BBC just as pre-production is getting under way for a brand new series of Doctor Who does make me worry that the wee shortarse will be at it again.
The news yesterday that the diminutive gnome Michael Grade is to be appointed as the new chairman of the BBC seemed popular with the coproration's staff, but will, I fear, spark concern among British SF fans. For it was Grade, many years ago when Controller of BBC1 who ulled the plug on Doctor Who, then the longest running SF show in the world. No, shorty, we haven't forgotten you!
Now I am the first to admit the show needed some serious re-working and updating at the time - despite the fact it brought in more in merchandising sales than it cost to make the BBC spent little money or resources on this incredibly well-loved show and ithad deteriorated. Putting it up against new mroe popualr shows on other channels didn't help much either. However, Grade made it pretty clear that he scrapped the show because he hated it. That's all - no good reasons as a broadcaster or programme maker, just that he didn't like it. And he thought Who fans were a bit sad. This form the man who promoted bloody Eastenders and foisted hackneyed scripts of cliched Cockneys on the nation each week.
An appearance on Paul Merton's excellent Room 101 (where people are allowed to argue for some of the things they hate most to be destroyed) confirmed this when the issue of cancelling Who came up again and he just re-iterated that he hated it and thought the fans (some of whom had turned up in the audience in costume) were sad. Now it strikes me if you have a product that is immensely popular round the world, which generates lots of money for you and has in fact become a British institution which, long after cancellation, people still show great interest in (book sales, DVD sales and new stories on the BBC's own web pages brought in massive numbers of hits) then as the chief of that company, regardless of your personal taste, you'd be happy to support it and make it grow? Wouldn't you be happy to have such enthusiastic fans and supporters? His re-appointment to the BBC just as pre-production is getting under way for a brand new series of Doctor Who does make me worry that the wee shortarse will be at it again.
Away with the fairies
According to an article in New Scientist researchers investigating the favoured explanations for the existence of so-called Fairy Cirlces in Namibia (mysteriously empty and barren discs of soil anything up to 10 metres in diameter) have found that none of the three principal theories actually hold any water. So, the cirlces are still mysterious and it's back to the drawing board for a new explanation for their existence. Or as one scientist put it, at the moment we're left with the Faeries option.
According to an article in New Scientist researchers investigating the favoured explanations for the existence of so-called Fairy Cirlces in Namibia (mysteriously empty and barren discs of soil anything up to 10 metres in diameter) have found that none of the three principal theories actually hold any water. So, the cirlces are still mysterious and it's back to the drawing board for a new explanation for their existence. Or as one scientist put it, at the moment we're left with the Faeries option.
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