Succulent red and black berries hang ripe below dying, golden leaves; nature prepares for the long slumber of the coming winter but offers us one last delicious bounty, a promise of life returning after the winter sleep.

Vamping it up in Toronto

Sooo busy lately, working with my colleagues on the latest version of the web site for FPI. It’s a much more flexible site bringing everything under one virtual roof. It’s a lot of work to get the thousands of graphic novels ready and moved over of course. Still running the existing site but I’ve got a good chunk of stuff up on the new site now and I’m pretty pleased with the way it is shaping up, I think its well worth all our efforts. Still, I’ve been spending so much time relentlessly entering graphic novels onto it that I started hallucinating a couple of dwarves on my screen, one dressed as Adolf Hitler and one a miniature Winston Churchill. Both were juggling kiwi fruit for some reason, while behind them a chorus of penguins in blond wigs sang Lily Marlene… At least I think it was a hallucination, perhaps my colleague buried a bizarre screensaver into his code for the site.

So I was pretty pleased when a DVD box set arrived from America for me to relax with a bit. The whole first series of Forever Knight on 5 discs. Anyone else remember Forever Knight? Used to be hidden away on the midnight showing (appropriately enough) on Sky back in the 90s. It was about an 800 year old former Crusader knight called Nicholas who was trying to make amends for his evil vampiric life by serving humanity – in this century he had become a homicide detective (working the night shift, naturally) in downtown Toronto.

It ran for three seasons and stories varied from some which were very much cop-crime tales to some which drew more on the vampire mythos (which I enjoyed more). Like the rather good Highlander TV series which was running at a similar time (FK’s leading man Geraint Wynne Davies was a guest star in one episode) many of the events in each week’s story would trigger memories from the lifetime of past centuries. FK was also one of the first shows I can recall being the subject of an internet campaign to keep it going – the Kick-start the Knight campaign and had quite a number of websites back in the Olde Days of the Web (the 90s, when we had to wind up the telephone crank similar to those seen in U-Boat movies to make astonishingly fast connections of 28.8KBS, less broadband more rubber band).

Despite that I’ve hardly ever met anyone who knows of the show – a chum at my old work watched it and a couple of friends in the States and that was it. Never saw it mentioned in any of the UK SF magazines either, which is why I had no idea it had ever been released on DVD, even if only in the US. Since I picked up a nifty multi-region player recently I thought I’d treat myself to it and it arrived for a decent price reasonably quickly.

The only sting was that HM Customs and Excise stung me for import tax – fair enough, it was over their £18 threshold for personal imports, but if the government is serious about pushing internet commerce in the UK they need to look at this – but this tax was doubled by the bloody post office who charged me a handling charge even higher than the import tax. Handling charge??? They’re the sodding post office!! Handling goods is their business!!! They’ve been paid postage then charge you even more to finish delivering it? Is this some scam between Customs and the GPO? What a rip. Certainly something I’ll have to consider before ordering the second volume.

Well, that’s given me something to relax with after a hard day of adding new graphic novels to the site and I’m really enjoying it, especially as I haven’t seen Forever Knight in years. I also got out for a few hours at the weekend to go the Royal Museum with Mel, who wanted to see an exhibition on Scottish textiles and design. Not bad, but not really my cup of tea, but it did afford me the spectacle of a pair of Harris Tweed Nike trainers and pink cashmere hot pants! Now there’s something you don’t see everyday…

Flying flu

As Europe shivers in anticipation of a supposedly imminent invasion of virulent migrating fowls we at the Gazette look into the reality behind this latest health scare. Governments and the mass media have colluded to inflame a public sense of panic at the imminent threat; as with the terrorist threat it serves the authorities in shoving through ever more controls and restrictions in citizens and helps the media shift more papers. But none of them are telling you the truth, dear readers.

Once again it is up to the intrepid staff of the Gazette to expose the Truth. And what a tangled web of conspiracies it is. The outbreak of bird flu in Asia Minor which lead to an EU ban on turkeys from Turkey is supposedly caused by birds migrating from Asia, where the disease has been common. Indeed Jack Straw is already using this as another reason to control the flow of immigrants into Europe and Fortress Britain while Tony Blair claims that mandatory ID cards in the UK would protect us from avian flu because terrorists and illegal immigrants who all carry unclean fowl with them wouldn’t have such ID and would be stopped, thus saving Blighty from devilish foreign shenanigans.

However, it is not that simple; certain elements of the EU community are using this ‘crisis’ not only to garner more powers to government bodies but to play the politics game. Doesn’t it seem suspicious that the first two nations to be struck are both eastern nations who are considering EU membership – a memberships that those EU nations closest to them are highly resistant to. The fact that a mass outbreak, cull and ban on exports has hit Turkey while it is in actual negotiations with the EU is remarkable – could it be that it isn’t only diseased birds certain EU governments are trying to keep out of Europe’s supposedly open borders?

Ah, but the conspiracy is even deeper than that, as Romania shows. A mysterious outbreak in parts or rural Romania; the animals swiftly slaughtered and disposed of efficiently. Simple commonsense caution or something more? Those familiar with history will be aware that Romania has long been the heart of world vampirism. Not the literary form of vampires with pale-faced aristocrats in frilly-fronted shirts but the dull-witted, almost mindless revenant peasant variety of folklore. And a defining characteristic of that kind of primitive vampirism in areas such as Romania (which, remember, treats Vlad Dracul as a national hero) is attacks on livestock.

Today we are told that superstitious villagers mistook forms of disease and plague for vampiric attacks, but now we must ask ourselves, did they perhaps know something we don’t? Something the European authorities don’t want us to know? And is it a natural phenomenon or the result of a scientific project gone dreadfully wrong? Were European scientists experimenting with ancient strains of Romanian blood tainted with the vampiric virus? Coming soon we examine how the Warren Commission and the assassination of President Kennedy are tied in to the whole Romanian vampire cover up and the supposed pandemic of bird flu from the East…

And it's good night from him...

Just about to dash out to meet some chums for dinner but I had to say how sad I was to hear of Ronnier Barker passing away today. Watching the show he and Ronnie Corbett did recently where they anchored some of their best classic material was a sheer delight - how terrific was it to watch their mini-serial The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town agian after all these years? I remember watching that with my parents when I was a schoolkid (yes, we did have TV then you cheeky buggers!). The fact that one was co-written by another of my favourites - and another British comedy hero - Spike Milligan, made it all the better for me.

It is too easy for folk to take potshots at old comedy shows and dismiss them. I remember watching the new 'alternative' comedians who came in behind the likes of the Two Ronnies in the 80s. Some I liked, some were fresh and new and some, let's be honest, were just talentless tossers who thought saying anything about Thatcher was funny (so why bother working on an actual joke?).

But even the then-new comedy shows from that period that I liked, like the Young Ones, just isn't as funny as the Two Ronnies or Porridge. Like Morecambe and Wise it is easy to sneer but secretly many of us still laugh at many of their sketches. Laughter is as vital a component of our lives as love, air and water. Its not bad way to be remembered though, is it? Ronnie Barker - he made a lot of us laugh. That's a nice thing for folk to say after you're gone.

Real Time

Many thanks to the Silvereel for kindly passing on this extract from the closing moments of Real Time With Bill Maher:


"Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of it. You can't start another war because you’ve used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Missionaccomplished.



"Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man?



“Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't.



“I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.



"But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.



"On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the budget surplus, four airlines, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the city of New Orleans.



“Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.



"So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: 'Take a hint.' “