2010 you and me? We're alright

Like with many things, come the end of the year it is a time of reflection of the past 12 months… in the form of an award ceremony or countdown or something. Often this is slightly random and always means nothing in the grand universal scheme – this blog version will be no different. So in this, the final week of 2010, Greville Tombs’ blog will now announce its 4 moments of 2010!

The Weirdest moment of 2010

You know what was weird this year? That Raoul “Moaty” Moat incident. That was weird.

I know other weird things happened this year and, heck, there were even other weird serial killers this year.

There was, notably, the bloke who admitted to killing 3 prostitutes. I listened to a criminologist on the radio discuss the inner mind of that guy – what the signs are that he is not really a normal, everyday person like us. I can’t help but think he missed the point here and there. “First of all the killer, when asked to identify himself to the court, gave his name not as Stephen but as the Crossbow Cannibal” [Ok – the rule is never give yourself a nickname but if you absolutely have to, then never a bit of a comic book villain name. But to be fair, his MO in the murders was a crossbow and he did suggest he had then eaten a bit of the victims after] “Then we learn that he kept an iguana and would take it for walks” [again, this is odd but not as odd as that time he chased down a prostitute, shot her in the head with a bolt arrow – from his crossbow – and then dragged her dead body back along a lane and into his flat] “Finally, we know that he had an extensive collection of criminology and populist history books on famous murders” [Yes and he also had that Crossbow, didn’t he, that he used to shoot women in the head with].

But for me, the Moat thing had it all. It had a nutter with a gun and misplaced paranoid vendetta issues who thought himself able to stage a form of Rambo: First Blood affair against the local constabulary of a gentle riverside northern English village (and for a short while succeeded). It had a national news system in place that could not only cope with, but at times wilfully fuel, the public interest in the events. And, crucially winning it this award, it had a washed up alcoholic ex-footballer trying to attempt to talk a known armed murderer out of his woodland hide with a fishing rod.

Gazza’s negotiation plan was like all the best plans – simple: shout to “Moaty” that he “had a couple of cans of beer, a dressing gown and a fishing rod for him in the car” at the Police Do Not Cross cordon. I especially like the inclusion of the dressing gown – because if nothing else, Moaty appeared the type of guy who would be appreciative of a warm dressing gown.

I would have sent Paul Gascoigne straight in. Surely the sight of Gazza wandering aimlessly cutting a Rasputinish figure with a fishing rod in a wood in the drizzling dead of night shouting: “Moaty! Moaty! It’s Gazza!”, would have got Raoul thinking that this has taken an unexpected turn even for someone who was now holed up in an excess water pipe with a gun.

The fact that the late Raoul Moat was listed (albeit lowly) in a poll conducted of the Newcastle Utd FC fans when asked who they would have preferred as team manager to the current team manager, only served to highlight this triumvirate of madness.

The sports personality of 2010

There is little to no debate here from the shortlist.

The World Cup went off like a firework – that annoying squealing firework and it was held to your ear. For 31 days. I used to play football with a similar ball they used in this tournament back in primary school. Back then it didn’t have a pretentious name – we called it far more accurately a “fly-away” ball. The most interesting personality was ITV pundit and former Jamaican international Robbie Earl giving those complimentary tickets of his to 30 orange mini-dress wearing blonde Dutch girls. The controversy being that these girls were the main thrust of an illicit ambush advertising campaign for a beer company. Robbie had just met them on the street and supposed that all 30 of them were into him in a big way. You can see how he could think that. The advertising executives believed that the girls would get free airtime from male television directors and press photographers and media bloggers simply because of their aforementioned blonde mini-dress wearing appearance. What did they take us for? For some men the times have moved on, daddy-o. This is 2010. I was almost offended.

The Wimbledon Championship in 2010 was entirely predicable too. There was the match in the early rounds that went on for 3 days [non-stop, I believe]. But the American always looked the likely winner.

The Commonwealth games, again, was only truly interesting outside the sporting events. Before it began, speculation grew that teams would refuse to attend on Health and Safety grounds. And, in hindsight, it might have been better if Bowls Scotland had decided not to bother. Not one bowling medal for Scotland? For shame Scottish bowls high performance elite. In the culture of balanced journalism, I think the name has to take some responsibility though: you look at a 73 year old man called Winky and try not to think “High performance Commonwealth Athlete… really? You can’t honestly be a team mate. Are you sure you are not one of the Pommel Horse jumper’s granddads and have gotten lost – y’know because you are senile with age? Heaven help us.”

We also had the Winter Olympics this year, where a competitor died and featured no snow. Grim.

So it leaves only one sporting personality in the running, so to speak.

Greville Tombs taking to the hockey pitch to join in the age old sport of hocker. Or “Hockey” as it is known in today’s parlance.

I had never played hockey before. I didn’t know if I was physically capable of playing for an entire game. I needed to train. Queue 80’s training montage: “It’s the – eye of the tiger… da, dad, da, dad, da”… running up the office building stairwell with my gum shield in / “got to get into the eye! Of the Tiger…” / rolling a hockey ball over the keyboard of my PC… “Dah! Dah, dah, daaahh...” / at the top of some ladders in a library with a hockey stick then hitting the books with the stick… “The eye of the Tiger…”/ punching frozen meat in a hockey skirt [the frozen meat in the skirt, obviously, not me. That would be mental]. Music fades as I throw a hockey ball high into the dusk sky and leap with arms raised to freeze frame…

Even after a montage of up to 4 minutes, it turns out that I was barely capable of lasting the pace. Men 20 years my elder thundered by me, small Irish women almost ran my legs off. In light of this, quickly, I found my position – the Franco Baresi defensive General role.

My Office Hockey Team season stats then are thus:
Played: 2, 1 win (4-1) / 1 loss (0-4)
Number of times passed to: 2
Number of successful tackles made: 2
Number of passes completed: 3
Number of touches of the ball: 5
Blood Injuries: 2
Caught the Golden Snitch: none times.
You can’t argue with numbers like those – even if you want to.



TV moment of 2010

There were some great TV moments. The syndicated run of T.J. Hooker was great TV – and only doesn’t get the award through disqualification on a technicality. Further, BBC4 had an excellent 3 part series about the development and history of horror films fronted by Mark Gatiss followed by a rewarding review of the life of E. A. Poe through his relationship with women. Also there were some disappointments – anything that was not an American cartoon on BBC3, that Saturday night thing with the omnipotent John Barrowman, the Million Pound Drop and ITV no longer showing Quincy M.E. episodes. And there was Daybreak.

Daybreak is a curio. Not GMTV but with a lot of the old GMTV line-up in bit part roles, being told to be excitable and find everything youthful and cool. It is GMTV with a slow gin listening to its daughter's music collection and claiming it to be better than Showaddywaddy even though it is plain it prefers Showaddywaddy and would like nothing more than to dance to it with Dr. Hilary Jones than be in its daughter's bedroom listening to this noise.

And there was Glee. F**kin' Glee.

Nothing betters The Scheme on BBC1 though. Well perhaps BBC Breakfast when Susanna Reid is on it. [Sigh]
The Scheme was a distraught, non-compromised, darkly hilarious viewing experience. So much so, that only 2 of 4 episodes have yet been aired for legal reasons. It simply forced the viewer to make judgements on what was being shown.

For each participant being filmed for the fly on the wall documentary, sadness, selfish entitlement, defiant anger and sense of resignation overwhelmed the screen. Drink, drugs and skirmishing moments of sex wedged between violence, arguments and blame on a backdrop of depravation and garden trampolines. It wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out Jeremy Kyle owns schemes and estates just like this and uses them as nature reserves for guests. Jeremy taking to his Safari styled JEEP and firing off tranquilizer darts into back gardens, twirling a cast net above his head, eyes wide with the scent of the hunt.

It would be fascinating to place the folk on This Is Essex, the polar opposite, but on the same spectrum, into the scheme and see how they got on. Not well, I would wager.

Most significant moment of 2010

No pre-amble. The Greville Tombs blog going live is the clear winner here.

And this is not just because I am biased. It is also because of my partial apotheosis complex. Ok, there was the Pope making his visit to the UK, in an attempt to deflect from what happened to the unicorns. There was the formation of the Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition government. There was the ash cloud over the Atlantic. There was the Chilean Miners rescue. There was the woman who put that cat in the bin to the horror of the nation [when asked why she did it she waffled on about it being a joke gone wrong, something she couldn't explain - I wished she would just say "look, the thing is I thought it would be funny, there was an easy opportunity, and it turned out I did find it quite funny. I would do it again too"] There were births. There were deaths. There were all sorts of things which happened in 2010 that will be potentially the most significant thing in 2010 to many people. It would be churlish of me to say otherwise.

However, this blogging thing, for me was significant as a new experience and I am glad I have entered into it. It has been interesting. Deciding what to write, trying to draw a line in the sand as to what should and should not be expressed in it was the tricky part. How to be entertaining reading, even for a moment, under those conditions, is a hard thing. Having followers (not the best with the aforementioned complex) and hearing of those who have made efforts to read the ramblings that have passed the self-edit filters was the bit I enjoyed most. So many thanks for that.

You may notice one or two decorative changes to the Blog and also a leading market research question to answer too. But more of that in 2011! Have a great end to your two oh one oh.

MR SNOW brings the snow now

Britain currently looks like this, from the moon:

And while Britain has been enduring sub-zero temperatures and heavy snow fall throughout December, this week I happened upon MR SNOW.

It meets all the criteria for being responsible: Giant mechanised snow making robot. Yep, it all fits.

Now, before you do the obvious thing and strap tennis rackets to your feet to begin the arduous pilgrimage to face your new god and once there start worshipping at its plinth before hoping to appease it with offerings, such as Aled Jones, let me stop you. This will be a futile task [OK burning Aled Jones in a giant Wicker (snow) man is all well and good – yes, it will raise the temperature in the close vicinity for a bit, I’ll give you that. Maybe even melt a bit of the snow. And it’ll also be a timely boost to ratings on that particular episode of Songs of Praise. But once it is over you will have to go back to your family – and what will you tell them? That you had a nice evening spent with like minded people, shared a few stories, set fire to Aled Jones to calm MR SNOW your new and therefore your family’s new god? Good luck with that] – futile because MR SNOW is not a deity.

We are obviously dealing with a highly sophisticated machine here.

Apart from the issue that it is a terrible name for a robot, it is clear just by looking at it that it has been created by science and (just as everything given life by man) it has gone haywire. It is almost certainly using the most advanced technology of the age. It stands as a truly awesome piece of technical engineering and design. It has cogs on its chest and everything.

I am no robotics engineer but I would say that it definitely gets its power from harnessing the kinetic energy from sledging children.

Do not panic citizens! There are 2 sure fire ways to defeat a robot. Even one as advanced as this. Either give it an ambiguous set of rules in its programming which it cannot compute and, while it is distracted silently killing your innocent comrades, find the off switch… or get more scientists to build a marginally bigger, incrementally faster, minutely more intelligent robot. I know which way my money is to be on – Bring the slight increase in warmth MR MILD!

If blog has gone down hill lately, break glass to release Lobos

My office has set-up an intranet. Long gone are the days of the old civil service intranet: A blocky 4 colour Windows 3.11 tone affair of ignorable staff organigraph, daily weather report that seemed fixated on temperature rather than if it would be sunny or rainy and 3 items of news (Management pre-approved ones which were not going to rile the blood of staff) scrolling across the bottom of the screen. [Incidentally, I remember the only time a 4th news story was added scrolling, shakily like ticker-tape, during the day was the news that Spike Milligan had died]

Now it is possible to create secure online Working Party and Department Groups, manipulate Shared Documents, host Interdepartmental Virtual Meetings, collectively add into Knowledge Databases, receive Management Notifications, complete interactive forms and disseminate any number of news stories you wish with RSS alerts.

All this efficiency for an open plan office with 8 people in it, who used to do many of those things with the crunching inefficient method of a chat and maybe follow up e-mail, way back in the old times. Of 2005.

[I have had a few of those olden days cryogenically frozen – to be thawed out at the very moment World of Warcraft: Contingency Plan 10am Meeting expansion pack is released]

“If something is written in stone – it will fall out of the data cloud. And perhaps squash a person with an idea.”

It is the end of the office paper document. These days it is all about the ongoing collaboration on lucid virtual documents and the fluid creation of organic policies around a virtual desk whilst using the internet to flight imbedded added value information into notes at a click of a mouse button.

But you know what it all makes me wonder? More so than: Why we have preposterously implemented the equivalent of the infrastructure of the UN to run the equivalent of a small cottage industry in Heathergems when we are pretty archaic in other ways? It makes me wonder what would happen if blog fan boy favorite Lobos the Robot was given the intranet?

Obviously that’s what I was wondering, what on earth else do you think I wonder about?

After all, Lobos would seem to be at an ideal evolutionary stage to use all this technology. Directly after man and office appliance merge like the worst Robocop film ever. Like Robocop 12 or something. The tagline: Half man, Half Cannon IRC 5035i – all Cop(ier) and looks like this:



Ha, ha! Look at it, trying to emote whimsy.

“Hey, I’ve just noticed that there is an Ethernet port at the back of Lobos. We could plug Lobos into the new office intranet!”
“You know, you should have created a working party on the intranet which would have alerted me via RSS feed to your proposal document that I could then add comments to, instead of simply shouting a statement across the room. But since you’ve got my attention, in this shameful lo-tech way, how would that make us more efficient beyond our current cloud online environment?”
“With its rudimentary 1993 vocalization software it would be able to read out vital management edicts out of its speaker!”
“But the intranet is designed in order that we are no longer distracted with verbal sounds.”
“And it’ll sound cool, like Stephen Hawking is talking to us!”
“Excellent. Do it.”
“OK, just putting the cable in the back now… oh… oh dear!”
“What is it?”
“Lobos has accessed our mainframe!”
“Do we even have a mainframe? It’s only 5 computers cobbled together by some grey cabling.”
“Now the printers are offline!”
“Right… best call IT.”
“We can’t, Lobos has cut the Telephone lines!”
“That beige boxed swine… it seems one step ahead of us at every turn. Almost as if it… perceives… our every next move.”
“Lobos has just declared a hostile takeover bid of our main competitor. We appear to have infiltrated the Kremlin, bypassed their firewall and have redirected the entire Russian nuclear armament’s global positioning onto their office building! We are at DEFCON 2!”
/TELL/ LOBOS:/ WHAT/ IS/ ROMANTIC/LOVE?/
“Jesus, it is exactly like Stephen Hawking is in the room.”

Ah Lobos, what will your biting office satire leave in its bloodied wake next?

God Shuffled His Feet

I have been offered the chance to put forward an offer to edit the provincial newsletter for my sector of work.

It is the successful, concurrent (although smaller distributed) sister publication to that of the main sector Newsletter [note capital N] which, of course, hosts the irregular written column by that dandy and rogue, none other than Car. d’Gan.

I sort of fancy doing it, you know. And, so, I thought about the application I would submit:

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the panel, the concept of editing the newsletter is both immediately alluring and daunting to me.

Alluring because of the power I would yield. Alluring too because – and I presume that this will not have escaped the panel – I would almost certainly consider it one up in my on-a-knife-edge game of brinkmanship with Car. d’Gan. [Yes – you see that Car. d’Gan? Do you see it? That’s my yacht, anchored off the coast of the Canary Islands, with dancing women on board, all dancing about me, hooked by my editorial talent, no one caring about the newsletter pension scheme except you? Yeah – you see it.]

It is daunting because I have not edited anything before. I have no point of reference. Really there is no rational reason for me or you, dear panel, to think I would have any talent for it. But, in stating that, I do recall a story of an earned Community Responsibility badge in the Sea Scouts…….

Once there was this kid who, in helping run the after school club for primary school children for that month to gain his Community Responsibility badge, had a role mainly in supervising games and setting up activities. And then tidying the bean bags, skittles, pencils and paper away into the large trunk chest at the end of the early evening. He had additionally been tasked with providing the mid-activity refreshments.

This kid was to measure out 30 plastic beakers worth of weak, mildest strength diluting Orange juice.

Well, he thought about this. He wanted the children to remember the month when ‘once there was this kid' who was amongst them. He wanted to blow the cobwebs of old fashion from their young, cowed workhouse shoulders with contemporary fluorescent Lycra ideas. Hell, he was basically Robin Williams in that documentary where Robin went to a school and read poetry out to boys but in return made them call him captain and live in a tree. This kid admittedly wasn’t paying it much attention when it was on the TV but felt he got the gist. He didn’t even watch it to the end, just taking it that Robin Williams simply explained things to Orsen and then said Na-nu-na-nu. Yes, definitely maverick level set to Robin Williams more than Christian Slater.

So on the first summer’s night this kid left to quickly go round to the local Safeway and came back with his version of American poetry read by an alien and not a bomb with a timing device strapped to him (though if it had meant pulling Winona Ryder, he would set a ticker in a bar of plastic explosive in a heartbeat, badge or no at stake, she wouldn't even need to ask [Free the Winona one!]). He made up 30 plastic beakers worth of weak, mildest strength diluting Summer Fruits juice.

When they saw the beakers laid out, the other leaders and helpers asked why he had done such a thing? Didn’t he know that a change of juice required a signed letter from parents? Didn’t he think about the consequences of a vibrant, different flavour?

I mean, sure, he was a good looking, mysterious, self-styled outsider. Enigmatic with an intelligent, smouldering lone wolf charm even. I would say, like an international playboy spy who followed his own rules with eyes than could melt iron and dice which rolled for high stakes. But this kid was, in the flush of youth, unrepentant. That night he was also wrong.

Some children refused to drink it. Others became irrational and started to panic, requiring restraining. One or two children drank it and enjoyed the change of pace. The majority of them though played up, pretending it was fine red wine. Falling crookedly into walls, sloshing the juice out of the beakers and onto the floor and mats in acted out inebriation and berating their pretend husbands and wives: “I saw how you were looking at them! Not that I am… let me finish! Not that I am surprised; the soul, for what it ever was, went out of this relationship years ago. We only stay together because of the pretend dog! This wine, this wine is delicious.”

Ugly, Summer Fruit diluting juice fuelled scenes.

And if this meandering story – or (you may suggest it, it is really not for me to say, but I can’t stop you claiming it to be) near-holy parable – says anything about editing a newsletter of limited distribution it is this: If I am your editor then hear my promise now: I will not change the cordial, just improve the strength. And probably will change the cordial.

Case dismissed.”

With a bit of luck, the panel will then make the correct decision.

Why a robust preservation policy might just save your life one day

At work I received one of those local sector community mailing list e-mails. This is what is said:

We have some music manuscripts which we have to pass on to another organisation. They have been in storage in a box in an unheated and possibly damp location for two years. When we opened the box there were tiny white mites moving in the box. These mites have not been identified as a particular species. We do not want to pass on the manuscripts as they are. I have read The Preservation Advisory Centre Guidelines, but they don’t do quick fixes. The Company partner is looking for a quick fix of a spray we can apply.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

This is around all 7 shades of wrong and, so, almost e-mail Genius! The implication that they basically are looking for someone to recommend a “spray” might be the most worrying part. This is the all too real consequence of Cillit Bang adverts.

I had to stop myself from typing immediately back an e-mail response:

You’ll be fine with a normal, everyday flammable lacquer spray from any good stationer. Spray liberally on mites and paper contents. Then burn the box, burn it to hell.

The actual answer is that there is no quick fix. The Preservation Guidelines are quite correct. Matters of paper conservation and pest control take a slow, expert hand combined with a rigorous preservation policy and environmental monitoring system to cure. It seems that this understanding is a little lacking here.

This situation will not turn out well. I am expecting the next communication to be received from the company via a collective e-mail will be from the King of the Mites making his demands and threatening to start “blasting hostages”.

I, of course, could e-respond in an attempt to maintain a dialogue with His Mitejesty, all the while trying to identify what mites we are dealing with: So far we only know they are tiny, white and their society is governed by a monarch as sovereign head of state.

But such negotiations would be tricky:

“Ok, the non-sequential sheets of damp paper are being readied to be deposited in an unmarked bag at the drop zone designated. Perhaps, King Mite, you would release a hostage in good faith?”
“I am King Mite II.”
"What happened to King Mite the 1st?"
“My father is dead. We mites are a fast breeding, short lived race. And I have new demands. My father was a fool.”
“Oh. Ok, what are your demands, King Mite II?”
“I am King Mite III and we want a Chopper on the roof in 20 minutes.”

Every day I get in the queue (Too much, the Magic Bus)

Winter is the worst time to use public transport: Sitting beside people spluttering, sweating and sneezing up their diseases and watching numerous sticky and clammy hands grip onto the hand rails in a form of unpleasant viral pollination. Looking out the window desperately ignoring this festering can of illness you are aboard is no good either, as the windows run and drip with the condensation droplets of a thousand breaths out of bacteria glooped lungs.

A bus in winter is surely god's petri dish.

Of course, whatever the season, there are always risks riding loose on the public transport. Having to put up with annoying strangers where our paths have crossed only because we both happened to catch the same bus is one of them.

In the past few public transport experiences I have been sung to by a strange, thin, little man in his late 20’s, dressed like a marathon runner, performing fully U2’s Beautiful Day (complete with Bono lunging to-and-fro stagger in my general direction) at a bus stop then stopping to take in our (absent) adulation – at which point I would have loved to have started a round up of Gay Bar (complete with jagged arm motion on the lyric “I’ve got something to put in you” in his general direction) with the other waiting commuters. I have been suggested as a potential husband to a girl by the rest of her Romanian family of professional beggars (I don’t speak Romanian, but sometimes you don’t need to). And I have been on a packed commuter bus where two young lads were talking loudly.

One was saying that he had a “hangy, man” from drinking the evening before (I correctly ascertained this was some sort of verbalised text speak for “hangover”) and that having a “hangy” when also having to work (presumably in Top Shop) was “not good, man” and that he hated having a “hangy”. “Hangys are the worst” apparently, “but a hangy shows you had a good time, man”. Ah, the catch-22 of juvenile alcoholic self-poisoning.

His pal then talked purposely loud, for the benefit of all us other passengers, for 20 minutes about how he finishes his work “early, man”, then he is liberated: “I can go out drinking and if I get a hangy I have all night to get over it” and that, now he mentioned it, he felt sorry for everyone on the bus having to go to their “boring office 9-5 jobs” because it wouldn’t be him: “I couldn’t work like that, man, in an office”. He couldn’t understand why people would go. “Look at them all, man.” He went on (and on) “all going to their rubbish jobs, man, all of them miserable on the bus because they have to go to work in an office, ha, ha! They can’t think of anything else to do, man, they are all so boring man, with their office lives. Look at their faces, man! They don’t even want to go, man. No one is having fun like me on this bus, man. These people on the bus, man, they’ve got it bad, man. I feel for them all, man, ha, ha...”

I took a snipers glimpse of him, in his grey beanie hat and postman’s uniform.

Yes, that is the true freedom – the life of a Postal Worker. We all envy them when we watch out the windows of our cubed offices as they soar, spiralling, forever upwards, into the sky each morning, at the end of their working day. They are neither bound with limits of science nor tethered to our grim rule of law. They are only held back by their own imagination and wanderlust.

Yes young Sir, you are a regular blue thing from Avatar.

Women want to be seen with you, men to be you. But men can never be you, for they are just men, not Postmen, like you.

Come to my house and eat my food and judge me superficially

It was a fortune or sorts to be able to watch an afternoon episode of the ITV show Dinner Date when on holiday recently. From what I gathered it is, essentially, the younger sibling of Come Dine with Me (C4) with the same premise of people cooking meals and others giving their evenings’ scores. However, to drop in a terribly witty cooking analogy, Dinner Date is served with a side order of seasonal “Passive deconstruction of female empowerment” vegetables.

A single man is taxied, during the week, to the homes of the single women he has chosen to eat with, based on a blind selection of their menus from a raft of menus at the beginning of the show. The women, for their part, expect to impress him enough during their evening to beat the other competing women to “win” a proper date at the end of the week.

A way to a man's heart is through his stomach and the willingness of a lady to cook nice food for their man is the important factor in finding compatibility for a relationship, are rules I would have expected more likely created if the 1950's had simply failed to run out.

You follow each woman as they prepare their 3 course meals, often with an easy listening comedy approach for the afternoon [like a local radio station's afternoon rock programme playing The Eagles] commentary from the off-screen narrator. You get to see the women fret when things go wrong in the kitchen and be relieved when things go right. You see how each woman tries their best to impress with their cuisine presentation on a variety of plates and roof slates and how they concern themselves about the man finding their meal delicious.

And all the time I am watching – there is a thought which persists that I surely can’t be the only one watching is thinking: It doesn’t matter what you cook love, he’s going to choose the tall blonde that he was with the previous night. Honestly, sweetheart, you could cook the soup equivalent of Ruben's painting of the The Massacre of the Innocents, but it aint going to make you any prettier.

And I am not going to pass much more comment about the woman who made an excellent summer berry frozen desert other than she lived with so many birds that she, almost certainly, also smelt of bird.

I wish I was wrong and that the food actually provides some sway in all this but the outcome is crushingly obvious come the time for him to stop enjoying these women serving him food and declare the winner. Will he choose the lady who created that daring and avant-garde flavour combination starter or will he go for the one in the mini-skirt?

For me though, there is a real concept high of the show. The women get to rate the man each after their meal too. They award him up to 3 stars. Ha, ha, the silly women squeezing every ounce of all their tiny brain power to think whether to give him an extra half star. In reality this counts for nothing. Their scores are just cutaway fluff and it is the man’s decision which ultimately counts for all.

When he decides, clearly on the most attractive woman – not even caring that he can’t overly remember what she cooked him [not that this matters anyway with the prize a meal at a restaurant, rather defeating the need for them to be good cooks to begin with] – or that she is way out of his league and he knows there is no future in it – he isn't bothered because she doesn’t get a say. She has to have a meal with him in view of strangers because he chose her and that’s that.

Still, we witness all 3 women getting themselves washed, dressed and perfumed for the prospective winner's end of week date. They, of course, don’t yet know his decision [Really? Not even deep down? Go on, look right down there, I think you’ll find your answer]. The 2 less attractive women get a knock on the door and are handed a microwave meal for 1 by a production flunky. The most attractive woman answers the door to the man.

That this is the Dinner Date's resolution, it feels it is one removed meal away from a man being filmed looking at a few Facebook public profiles on his laptop whilst drinking a cup-a-soup from a hairline fractured mug, then shouting "that one" at the screen and grabbing his jacket.

A man's desire is for the woman, but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

In another sense, Dinner Date is sad narrative of how little we have progressed… men being driven around to women who will freely feed them in raised hope of being picked for a little extra attention from them. In all honesty, it is as if the Spice Girls’ ethos brought through their musical portfolio had never even existed.

Against Martian reservations

NASA is advertising a job of a lifetime. Or more accurately: a job for life. Or much more accurately: the job of life. On the planet Mars.

NASA believes that it is now technically possible to send a group of people to effectively colonise Mars.

The 9 month trip is a one way ticket affair, however, as a return journey would be both prohibitive in cost and complexity to undertake. The Mars colony will instead be expected to survive and grow in relative independence and be maintained through regularly dispatched deliveries of provisions. Such as, I would assume, air.

All this, of course, opens up two polar lines of thought. One - of human existence beyond Earth, where the potential to expand the reasoning and the infinite beauty of our position in the universe can finally begin to be fulfilled. And the other - The alien quadrilogy. Yes, wicked Martians, malevolent computers and the wrathful Khan are all conjured up when thinking about branching out into living on other planets.

But what the outcome to the manned Mars mission will be, to my mind, lies somewhere nearer in-between Lost in Space and Capricorn One. Financial cut backs.

Even if it gets the all systems go [that's a NASA analogy there] I can see NASA quickly outsourcing the rockets fired to Mars stuffed with the air and magazine subscriptions. Times are hard for NASA. And once the colonists are launched the euphoria will likely dissipate as quickly as the plume from their shuttle thanks to our generation Y lifestyles, so who will notice a couple of corners cut? Apart from the Mars Colonists. And they won’t really get a say. They are glorified dog cosmonauts – we have to send them air in rockets, for heaven’s sake.

The hippies will stop protesting in their tie-die fashions and no longer hold hands around the launch site and run out of daffodils to stick into the exhausts of the booster packs. Songs with the words “Mars” “Spaceman” and “Stars” in the lyrics will swiftly fall of the Radio playlists. It will still be pretty exciting for the colonists, don’t get me wrong there. Those guys will still be still very excited for most of this, I am sure. I mean - come on! MARS! But for the people back on Earth the Mars colony after a month or two of them landing will be nothing but a no longer clicked internet bookmark for a sponsored Mars bio-sphere webcam site when it becomes all too apparent an ancient alien race are not about to hunt the colonists as game.

I wouldn't be surprised if NASA outsourced to Parcel Force: A Mars colonist finding a Failed Delivery card behind the bio-sphere air lock. The little scientist shaking his fist into the web-cam, “I was waiting in for it all day! You all saw!”

But no one did.

So yeah, good luck getting your air supplies, space losers.

Addendum blog 7th November

Hello you true truth seeker of the truth. Did you see the panic caused with the unicorn blog revelation? Only 2 weeks since the Blog was published, The Papacy released the news - or should that be "unicorn smokescreen"? - that condoms might not be all that against the Catholic faith after all. In certain circumstances. [Like when the real reason is revealed about why all the magical unicorns are dead]

The mainstream news all picked up on it. It was huge, worldwide news. That's how major an announcement it was.

But we know what it really means.

Let's say no more. But I'll know you by the masking tape put in the symbol of the X across the front of your woolen jumper.

Noah killed all the Unicorns

Step away from the Dan Brown books about coded religious messages in paintings, encrypted biblical texts, holy bloodlines and secular cult secrets placed deep within a labyrinth of tunnels [but watch the Google hits rocket for this blog now! Clever Greville, very clever] because I have made an actual Theobibcalogical discovery.

Now I think you'll find no one has said it is of "Jesus: Lost King of Atlantis" proportions. No one has mentioned that. I didn't hear anyone talking about that, did you? No. No you didn't. Best keep it that way. Because the truth is, of course, too powerful to go to the authorities with. It is, naturally, far too mind blowing a truth to publish to be simply bought indiscriminately by the mere public to give me unaccountable wealth. Far better to put it here, on the head of this needle, to be read by only those whom seek the truth in the... [sigh] haystack... of zombie alien approved "information" and their rubber stamped "facts".

For some They Live wasn't just an audaciously great film.

I was minding my own business, looking at a 19th century tract - we've all been there. I turned to a page where the author proposed the only possible plan which Noah must have followed to harmoniously house all the animals in the world together in a big boat. Or Ark, if you will. Or as the author seems to have willed, a large floating shed, with one slot at the side for air.

One of the boxes immediately caught my eye. In it were animals which appeared to me as recognizable as they are non-existent: 2 unicorns.

Unicorns

UNICORNS

What was going on? There was definitely some hidden message here: Could it be a subtle sign left for a future person, such as myself, to interpret when some form of superinformationhighway had been invented? I think I can speak for everyone that this is the only rational thought we have open to us.

I don't know if you have done much theological research into the absence of the unicorn in jungles, or wherever they should be, in todays world, but with - would you believe? - only the briefest of Google searches, I found, what I gather are, all the theories handily detailed in this (possibly) government/zombie alien funded website, [which, let's be honest though may be maintained by a woman in her 40's wearing a self-knitted full body unicorn outfit, should not nessecarily count against it's content], and each start with the view that the Unicorns never made it onto the Ark.

It was clear to me that the 19th century author had this secret message: the Unicorns had made it onto the Ark after all! And from this, it is obvious to anyone what happened.

But one question remains: why did Noah slaughter the Unicorns?

I prefer to think that it was always in Noah’s plans to not come back with Unicorns. Although, I also prefer to think of Noah as played by Smokey and the Bandit era Burt Reynolds.

In any case, with his neighbors mocking him as he made preparations – he needed an answer to their disparaging questions:
“So, Noah, you’re going to put all the animals in the world on this boat, nice joist work by the way, with you and your family living along side them until the diluvium flood your God will inflict upon this sinful earth to kill us ordinary, everyday, simple, idol worshiping, copyright infringing folk retracts?”
“Yip.”
“But how, dear Noah, will you feed all these animals?”
“Plants.”
“But what of the flesh eating animals, Noah? They must also eat on this long and arduous test of your faith.”
“Unicorns.”
“Unicorns?”
“Yip.”
“Hmm, fair enough.”

And I can just imagine the Unicorns waiting in line at the gangplank:
“Hey, Debbie, have you noticed?
“Noticed what this time, Neil?”
“The Javan Rhinoceros, only two of them. Only two Long-beaked echidnas as well. Tigers, Gorillas, panda bears, even the Marmosa andersoni… just 2 each! In fact all the other animals, they're only getting on the boat two-by-two. And now look at us! 26 of us! We are the chosen ones, alright, Debbie! It's because we can talk. Things will be different when we get on board, you’ll see! We’ll be at the Captain’s dinner table every night.”

Later, as the film, below, harrowingly reveals through the medium of song, Noah came up with some vague story about them free wheeling unicorns going off frolicking instead of getting on board and "nothing he could do" when they "floated off". Yeah right. Like that sounds plausible. But until now, laughably, that is what people actually believed.



The fact is, Noah was spot on to choose the Unicorns: For, I’d like to imagine, they turned out to be the most delicious of all animals in God’s kingdom and their horns were actually those coloured marshmallow twirls.

Of course I would also like to imagine that the ark was less of a boat and more of an articulated trailer. And the flood more of the state of Texas. And the animals were not so much placed in a deliberate matrix for optimal harmony between species but jammed into wooden freight boxes. And the animals were bottles of illegal Hooch.

Are you watching Car. D'gan? - this is real blogging.

Now, introducing Mr. Jimi Hendrix.

Not proper canon

Dear Reader, this is something I swore I would never do in my blog. Writing about not writing. Surely there is nothing worse reading.

"Sorry for not updating this, I really should." Is there is a more vacuous statement in web 2.0 life? No. There is not. So I sympathise with you if you got this far. I feel the pain too. But here we both are all the same. And it sickens me more.

In a vein attempt to merely bend rather than break my own 3rd rule of blogging, please see this as not a proper article but more as if I am putting you on hold as a call-centre might do. Sit back enjoy the muzak and let the apologetic platitudes drift over you like clouds in a blue sky.

Your call is important to me.

So I must apologise for my lack of updates to this blog.

I have not been, as the kids say, "out-of-town" nor have I been so buried in work that I have not had the time. I actually have a valid reason.

The Greville lap-top upon which I produce the blogettes guerrilla-fashion has broken down. The fault, even more annoyingly, is but intermittent. The back light of the screen flickers on and off. Screen / no screen / screen / no screen. This meant that my usual gonzo style would have been reduced to short bursts of attention grabbing nonsense.

Frankly, if people wanted to read like that then surely someone would have come up with a form of publishing restricted to, I don't know, 140 characters say. And no one has.

But do not fear loyal reader! For I have found the will and the drive somewhere from deep inside and made the effort to find the means to post again! I have wandered into the spare room and turned on the PC.

Don't get me wrong, it is not as good as being able to watch TV and blog. And my posture is a bit more workman-like. And it is a bit colder through here. But until I can make the screen on my laptop come back for more the 45 seconds at a time it is a sacrifice I am prepared to make.

Thank you for holding.

Normal service will be resumed very shortly.

Gather ye goblin looking office workers and no harm shall come to thine.

Well, well. Welledy, welledy. I see my nemesis Car. D’gan been published in our sector magazine again. The magazine is titled, the Newsletter.

Usually he writes a semi-regular segment in the Newsletter, detailing a small aspect of his professional life. I am sure it is meant to be a mildly amusing, knowing but light comment about a latest piece of news or a funny experience which he generalises to the point where we can all empathise and ponder over our morning warmed bagel. Instead I read it non-blinking with metaphorical drool like a spent bungee rope leaking from my metaphorical mouth at the surreal ramblings of the loon.

Here is an example:

The fact that numerous colleagues have been first in the firing line when firms are faced with redundancies (and grouped with cleaning staff, post room workers etc when examining relevant skill sets) never fails to disappoint. It will be interesting to see what happens to these organisations in relation to their provisions in the future, although I don’t suppose we will ever really know. A difficult question indeed. Admittedly using a Blackberry to take such a call in hospital may show that I really should get out more.

Make a point you cretin!

Now by some misadventure, somebody in the editorial staff has evidently decided that what the people want is to know is more about Car. D’gan: the man behind these simply bizarre gonzo articles. Personally I would rather read the tweeted conversations of the remaining few who still think they are members of the Blazing Squad about their women folk. But here we are.

It turns out that he is possibly even worse in a Q&A format. I know that the questions are a bit of amusement in an otherwise dry affair amongst committee reports and promotional material and it would have been felt that he would be an ideal candidate (given his local remit) to answer them in an irreverent and witty fashion – but I would tentatively put forth there is a fine line that he has crossed. From Good Morning Vietnam to Platoon.

I would suspect that he has not been contacted while driving through town and had the questions spat over speakerphone like a Gatling – it will almost certainly be the case that he has had time to sit, reflect and redraft his answers before he submitted this word resemblance to a series of mini seizures.

Newsletter alumni Car. D’Gan, answers our questions…
Q1 If you weren't employed in this sector, what would you be?
Miserable.
Q2 What annoys you most in your career?
What annoys you most in your career?
[Sorry to interfere in your enjoyment of his very witty and deliciously irreverent answers so soon but this could be some sort of exetential humour going on here, he may be actually deploying a form of martial art joke using the Q's power to reveal it's own inadequacies… or, equally, it could be the verbal equivalent of taking the interviewer's arm and slapping them with it whilst shrieking "Why are you hitting yourself?"]
Q3 How do you spend your time away from your organisation?
I do enjoy a spot of basket weaving and dry stone walling.
Q4 What is the one thing you couldn't live without at work?
Anger.
[Ok - another interuption - but might this be the 2nd most worrying answer ever after “the dismembering”?]
Q5 Which famous person would you most like to present you with the employee of the Year Award?
The editor of the Newsletter.
[NB she’s not famous – at least not in the biblical sense]
Q6 What’s your favourite legal drama series or movie?
Chips.
Q7 What are your favourite three songs?
I have always thought that this question was virtually impossible (as I only know one).
Q8 Do you have any phobias?
Grown men spending their weekends dressed as orcs, goblins and wizards.
Q9 Have you ever been attacked by an animal?
Our ex-Manager broke my thumb with a cricket ball once if that counts (during a game obviously)? I still recall the annoyance on his face the next day when I arrived with a Cumberland sausage attached to my hand and his comment: “That was a bad career move”.
[What does that story even mean? Honestly - what is he on about? You fool, Car. D’gan! Don't toss that one away! You could have saved that prime piece of narrative to be savoured in your own column!]

With a bit of luck, he'll be back writing is column again soon. I geniunely mean that. And when he does, I may send in my constructive views about it: his same column word for word, comma for comma, back to him. Every day for a month. He'll find that funny, I know all thanks to this Q&A.

Don’t tell the Bride… but she’s marrying a dick.

I know, you don’t need to go on about it. It was late at night, I was on my own and the thought somehow struck me – it can’t give me 3 bad experiences can it? I know the risks but I’m an adult. And I changed the channel to after hours BBC3. It’s not an addiction. I can stop anytime I want. You’ll see.

Don’t Tell the Bride is a TV programme construct which should provide no dramatic tension. The concept is that the BBC give an engaged couple a large budget to spend on their wedding, only they more specifically, give the budget to the Groom-to-be and then forbid the Bride-to-be any contact (and so input) into the wedding plans until the “big day”.

But this should be no problem. The couple will have surely discussed some wedding ideas between them well beforehand. At the absolute minimum, knowing the concept of the programme they have signed up to appear on, instructions, boundaries and minimum requirements for the wedding will have been agreed in the 10 minutes before the camera crew turn up.

So perhaps an issue with the choice animal the napkins are foldes as or place setting's font - something like that - small fry - that will cause huge tantrums for over wired brides. But that's it.

The reason to consent to be part of this show is either that they will get a budget for a wedding they could not afford otherwise, or they want to watch their happy day on BBC3 and again on the i-player.

Either way the idea is pretty romantic when you think about it. It means that the Bride has the chance to get the wedding day that she thought she could only dream of and the Groom will have the chance to be the man to provide her with the best day of her life. Unless it turns out the Groom is a dick.

The episode (6/12) runs 2 parallel stories: The Groom-to-be (I didn’t bother remembering their actual names so I’ve called him here Simon) and that of the Bride-to-be (a girl who I have decided answers to Shelly).

Shelly, the viewer quickly finds out, is very much a family girl. She is close to her sister, brother and parents, visiting them at least 3 times a week. It is also quickly revealed that she has quite set, though legitimate, thoughts about her wedding day. She would invite near 150 guests, her family would all take formal roles in the day and the location would be at English estate with grand house and marquee. The theme would be traditional, with a modern sleek twist. It is also mentioned that she has a few key thoughts on a wedding dress, but more on this later.

Simon, the narrator tells us, is “a bit of a gambler” while the film shows him playing a Fruit Machine in a pub. Simon says, “Most weddings are boring and people fall asleep at them – I want mine to be exciting. Aw! I’ve just nudged a BAR!”

Simon invites his Best Man by day (and Elvis tribute act by night) over to start planning the wedding. The Best Man says, sagely, “You know you mustn’t screw this up – you know what she wants.” Simon has the expression which yells back: I know this to be so, my Best Man, but you also know I am a Dick, and says, “Yeah, but I have always wanted a Las Vegas wedding.”

The Best Man suggests that this would not go down well but both admit it would be pretty funny and so as a compromise Simon decides to give Shelly a fair opportunity to have the wedding she wants… on the roulette wheel. Black = Las Vegas / Red = Wedding the Bride actually wants. He then stakes £20 on Black as an added good luck omen for his preference. 25 seconds later: Viva Las Vegas! And 40 quid!

The Gambling Gods now appeased, back at the computer Simon is trying to get travel deals. The best he can manage is spending half the budget on travel arrangements for 6 people. It means that there will be no guests and, also, doing the math, 2 less of the bridal party. Ah, well.

The viewers then watch as Simon and the Best Man fly out to Las Vegas on a week long scouting trip for venues. And while they are there why not take in some sights too, I mean it can’t be all work for the wedding! This is great, they decide. They can have a holiday before the wedding, organizing things as they go. It will be pimps easy to plan anyway and Simon asks a random member of the public if she knows a good place to have a wedding reception, as proof. She can't understand him and hurries in any direction that makes him further away from her. So they go to a few casino’s, have a few drinks, relax by the pool. Then it’s back to the “hard” work of planning.

After visiting the Little White Chapel (“You can go for the Dennis Rodman Package” – shudder) and taking a bridal gondola around a hotel made to look like Venice they settle on a reception room located in the same Venetian Hotel.

They then book out the largest house in Las Vegas for the reception, for the 6 of them.

Next are the outfits to organise. The Groom-to-be settles on matching suits for all the men: white suit and shirt with baby blue waistcoat and tie. “In England I would never have thought about an outfit like this, but we are in Vegas… why not?” The Best Man, suggests it’s ok to have a bit fun with their attire, but the wedding dress cannot be anything other than perfect.

Back in England, the unsuspecting Shelly is getting excited. She knows that her Husband-in-waiting loves her and will be pulling out all the stops to give her the wedding she has always wanted. She is taken, cynically, to a wedding dress shop with her mum and sister and asked to choose a dress she would have chosen, if she hadn’t given up those sorts of rights. It is, in her words, “Pure white, full of bling, large and with a long train – with no roses or pleats – it is the perfect dress” They all cry.

Unbelievably in Las Vegas the Best Man picks out as near to an identical dress as there could be, “I really think this is her. She would love this.” Then quite believably, because he is a dick, the Groom-to-be declares, “No, I don’t like it, really don’t like it. No, put it back”. He gets a lady who looks nothing like his love to model a dress: “Oh, now that I like. That looks good on her. Elegant. Like an evening dress. I really like the rose design, the pleats – what colour is this dress? Dark ivory – yes, that’s the one. Ship it to England!” He then asks if the girl would like to come to the wedding, he knows that Shelly wanted lots of guests. So that by my reckoning would be 7 then going – 6 of them and the wedding dress model stranger guest. She, mercifully, declines.

At this junction things quickly begin to truly unravel.

When the dress arrives, Shelly and her mum and sister cry again. It is early morning in Las Vegas and the boys are woken to a ring tone. The mother-in-law-to-be has called the Best Man. He is told that they need to come to the shop and choose another dress. But they can’t. And he can’t say why. Would ruin the surprise, remember. “Can Shelly pick out another dress?”

She does. It’s the one she saw first. It’s £1500.

Simon gets out the budget sheet. He does some sums. He still needs to buy a cake and purchase make-up and hair products. He passes a note across the twin bed. “Right, Simon has spent most of the money – Shelly can’t have that one. She’ll need to find one that costs no more the £400”

The men are asked to make cut-backs. Quickly.

Simon calls his mother-in-law-looking-less-likely-to-be back. “Even with cuts, and they will significantly affect the day I was planning, just to let you know, I can give you £600 to buy another dress, tops.”

That’s not good enough. Find the money.

“OK, I’m taking money out of my own account now. £800. That’s the limit for a dress. Unless Shelly wants to put money in to make up the difference?

So Shelly sighs and, with a shake of the head, takes out her purse and pays for ½ her dress.

There is only 2 days before the wedding and, while Shelly and her sister are taken on a Spa treatment break, the rest of her the family is given a DVD to watch. Simon and his Best Man are gurning into the camera lens from a hotel room into their living room. Thank the stars, 3D TV hasn’t taken off yet. “Las Vegas, Baby!” they shout down the speaker, and the family leaps about. Oh! They are still talking! What other great surprises?: “Unfortunately, some of you can’t come – only the following names will be making the trip…” and like the fat lass and the boy with glaucoma at PE Simon’s OWN sister and the Shelly’s brother sit, realization dawning slowly across at once disbelieving brows as their names are not on the roll call.

The day before the wedding and the Shelly and her sister are now sitting in a pre-booked taxi. On the way to the airport. Shelly, laughs: this is a small practical joke, she knows the wedding is in England. They spoke about it. At length. As they pull into the drop off point the sister suspects that it is not a joke. Shelly says, of course it is. It simply has to be. It’s just a bit of a larger practical joke that she first thought. They are then shown to the Check-in desk and an envelope is waiting with her name on – “see?” she turns to her now headache induced sister, “this letter will tell me where we are really going!”

And it did. The 2 tickets inside told her they were really going to Las Vegas.

At that both girls break down, sobbing. Hugging each other for consolation, they see their family. Well, some of their family. They too are in tears as they go on to tell how not all the family will be able to go. “I am marrying someone who obviously doesn’t know how, or doesn’t care, to make me happy!”

The BBC film crew cotton onto the fact they have a new show on their hands and allow Shelly to call her imminent husband, breaking the rules. The wedding is in the balance. They DISCUSSED all this! How did it go so wrong?

Simon listens then says, “I love you. I would have got all the guests and family over if I could. But I just couldn’t. Get on the plane so we can get married.”

[It is not as if he was living in another country or she was a mail order bride. They could have got married in a land where all their friends stayed. He could have achieved this, sensibly]

“You have torn my family apart. I will need to think about it.”

“All I can do now is hope she gets on that plane” he says meekly but unrepentant to the camera. [You might have, at this point, noticing that she was not best pleased about the travelling or the much of the wedding plans, offered instead to come back to see her to patch up your fast dissolving relationship, I suppose].

And get on the plane she does. Without the remaining bridesmaid, her sister, who refused to make the journey. The couple, now together briefly in a cab, travel to the hotel and Shelly asks if she will be spending the night before her wedding alone? Simon pulls a frustrated face. Yes. Yes she will.

They go to her room and ask for privacy. The camera crew leaves them to it, filming the closed door in the lobby. Thankfully this isn’t too boring as they have left the couple attached with microphones so the viewer can hear what is going on inside. Shelly is upset, “this is not at all what I wanted. I wanted all my family, my friends!” Simon uses the tact of Leatherface finding himself at Spring Break '75: “None of them matter, what’s important is that you and I get married in Las Vegas – we won’t have this opportunity again.” And then he leaves.

No backing down, no admitting that he may have made a couple of inappropriate decisions – like putting chips on a roulette table – along the way. No seeking redemtion. None of that – nothing like an apology for making the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with choose between him and her sister. Actually something admirable about that at this stage.

The next morning at breakfast, Simon sits with his Best Man, “All I can do now is hope she turns up to the reception room.”

Not the greatest of wedding plans that, hope.

Against all odds and sanity Simon’s hope mantra pays off and Shelly appears in the reception hallway in her perfect wedding dress. “You’re a lucky man” his Best Man announces to a Groom dressed as a Slush Puppy beside him.

At the reception the Best Man is singing in pigeon Elvis “Always on my Mind” and the tiny cake (well it is only for 6) is cut. “What a magical day” the mother-in-law announces to a camera outside, “Simon really put so much into this”. “The sacrifices he had to make to get this wedding to happen really were difficult for him to make” said his sister to a camera at her home. “I was upset before, but now it has been a wonderful day I’ll never forget, Simon loves me and he has thought about me in every choice he made for this wedding. And the venue is beautiful.” said Simon’s new wife, chronically unaware she had married a dick.

Which all leads me onto my initial point of why the internet was made – to prove that Superman is a dick.

Judging a Book by It's Cover - No. 3.

Hello and welcome to another edition of... judging a book by it's cover! So what have we got this time? Draw back the curtain, atomic human!



Judging this book by it’s cover it appears pretty straightforward: Morrissey is well up for meetings. Look at him, checking his watch by the duck pond in the park to see when the next meeting starts. It's probably a local community meeting. Possibly about saving / concreting said duck pond.

But enough supposition. Morrissey's favourite meeting sort is the AGM. Of course it is - it's the classic.

Some say the rift between Johnny Marr and Morrissey began when at a band meeting Marr proposed a motion during Any Other Business to have bacon rolls during future band meetings and Morrissey (as usual) chairing the meeting took a vote. Counting both his own raised hands in objection, Morrissey declared that the motion was not carried. Marr, knowing Morrissey’s stickler approach to meeting administration [and his own penchant for serving brutal retribution cold] would later refuse to second Morrissey’s proposal of the previous band meeting minutes.

And it was an incident from which - at the risk of sounding like the beginning of a late Saturday night serious pop programme on BBC Radio2 by Stuart Maconie - their relationship was never to recover. [Queue fade-in jangly start to This Charming Man before sharp fade-out when the lyrics kick-in].

With the band members going their separate ways after the Strangeways LP, Morrissey chose to put music to one side, concentrating instead with experimenting with evermore different types of meetings: the job appraisal meeting, the creative thought-shower meeting and, most successfully for Morrissey, the interdepartmental monthly stationery meeting. Marr would go on in later years to be part of many “super-groups” though in reality these would always, confusingly, be inferior to most “groups”.

We won’t know if the bacon role sub-section proposal did occur, unfortunately, from this book as it is only the collected agendas and minutes of all the meetings Morrissey has had from 1989-2004.

Our greatest weapon is a flip chart and another flip chart... our 2 greatest weapons are...

I received a telephone call which I was only half expecting. It was from a market research company.

I had helped out an old neighbour a couple weeks earlier in their market research work. He had taken up the part-time job having retired from his position in the building trade. I agreed to help him reach his quota for market research into the Advertisement of Banks.

I was happy to do it as for years a family friend had been employed in Market Research and for most of my school days I would have to rate, in depth onto forms with tick boxes, comment boxes and grading schemes, my breakfast cereal, which would be in any of 5 identikit white boxes marked on the sides A to E and drink juice from unmarked white cartons. To be fair, goodness knows what I was consuming.

Although, I was a contributory reason Snap! Crackle! and Pop! sounded the way it did in 1987 [needs more Snap!]. And disliked what turned out to be TAB Clear [every sip tastes like I am gulping down the vacuum of space].

He telephoned me saying that though, technically speaking, he really should have seen me in person it would be OK. He asked me 3 questions before telling me there were many more questions but he would fill them in later himself. Further, should the Market Research Company call me (which was unlikely) then I was to say that he had came round, I didn’t know him beforehand and he had conducted the full market research questionnaire with me. Basically, he said, just say yes to everything they ask.

This was good, as I am not the best of liars. Just keep saying yes.

This was not going to be like the time I was researching a new kettle and had to write a daily diary of why I was using it and give my conclusions to its performance. Some time after, I was contacted by the kettle’s parent company concerned that on one entry I had written, “It burned my feet”. I had to confess that it may have been less the kettle and more that I had been tired and emotional after a night out and was trying to make an instant coffee. Anyway, the fact remained; one of us was a bad pourer.

So this was the back story to the call I took.

Hello. Do you remember being interviewed a few weeks ago about banking advertisments?
Yes.
Did the market research interview take place in your residence?
Yes.
Was this the first occasion the Market Researcher has conducted market research with you?
Yes.
Did the Market Researcher produce an ID Card?
Yes.
Did the Market Researcher explain on whose behalf the market research was being conducted?
Yes.
Did the Market Researcher use an electronic chart on a lap-top to go through the questions and provide illustrations?
Yes.
Did the Market Researcher use a large flip-chart with stand to go through the questions and provide illustrations?
Hmmm [Well, he is older, a flip chart would be more likely than a lap-top, I better backtrack] … er… yes.
Did the Market Researcher use a small, hand held flip-chart to go through the questions and provide illustrations?
[Oh! Right now, wait... They probably know he can’t drive, how would he transport a large flip chart and stand? A large flip-chart just doesn't make sense. Now a small flip-chart – that would be far more plausible]… Yes.
So the Market Researcher used a lap-top, small flip chart and large flip chart in your residence to go through the questions and provide illustrations?
[Now, you've backed me into a corner here. All of a sudden my answers appeared less authentic. To be fair I didn’t realise that these other questions about chart types were coming up and I could hardly ask if I could I start again. Why couldn’t it have been multiple choice?
No, far better to let the lady think that this man, who I had never met previously, has turned up at my flat and questioned me, producing larger and larger charts, until he broke me down and I gave him the answers he wanted from his, clearly, full-on evening presentation that he had set up just for me about the songs used in the new Halifax ads.]
Yes.

I am pretty sure I've got him a promotion out of all this.

Inn-defensible

At 2:45 am this morning I noticed BBC3 broadcast the programme Inn Mates. I was up due to my nocturnalsim. I didn't even know BBC3 kept going after midnight. For the love of all on this earth, at the stroke on midnight never press the button to change the channel to BBC3. In fact, best just rip the electrical wiring straight out the plug of the TV set on the 12th chime. You will thank yourself in the morning. It may have been the lack of sleep but nevertheless I quickly became enraged at the show and all who were involved in making it.

According to the BBC Comedy Blog:

BBC Three has commissioned The Inn Mates, the first pilot to be developed through the [BBC College of Comedy] scheme. Written by Manchester-based writer and comedian John Warburton, the script focuses on a group of people, some friends and some strangers, who eat Sunday lunch at The King's Ransom.
With the pub as a central location, the show also goes out and about to follow the lives of the regulars, who include a happily married couple; an unhappily married couple; a son trying to forge a relationship with his sperm donor dad; a 'free and easy' young woman in search of true love; two old women who haunt the smoking shelter; and a pair of community support officers whose dramatic fantasies will never be matched by reality.
John said, "I am incredibly chuffed the BBC have decided to pilot this. Over the last 20 years I have spent a great deal of time drinking in pubs in the name of research and this means I can now claim the whole lot back against tax. The College of Comedy is a superlative scheme, it has been invaluable to me as a writer in terms of learning and support".
Congratulations John!

So this is what is wrong with it:
First up: The title is a pun. Inn Mates / Inmates - see what John did there? See, he took the idea of a group of friends [and strangers], right, whose lives we see from the locus of a pub or - ha, ha - "inn" and calls it Inn Mates but it is a comedy featuring larger than life characters who do funny, idiotic things in the pub so it can also be misconstrued as the word "inmates". Like what they call those with mental health issues who are in hospital. You see... it's really very clever. Do I need to explain it again? It is very cerebral.

The only place for puns are in Christmas crackers (are all cracker jokes based on simple word play?) and at a dinner party to inflect to other guests the end of a particularly witty story. And in newspapers found on the dashboards of transit vans. That's it. Never as a title of a digital channel comedy programme.

So, already, at 2:50 am, I am thinking this show has ground to make up.

Second is the filming values and acting - BBC3 have decided, clearly, on a house style: a mix of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps (itself outstaying it's welcome after 2 series) and Coming of Age [which I watched 45 seconds of once and am sure as a consequence cost me 2 years off my lifespan]. And the acting and comedy timing is... oh lord... indescribarably poor. That is to say - so poor I have had to make up a new word just to continue with my own existence. Now that is poor.

Third is the focus on young people. This implies that it is targeting the 15-22 year old demographic. This is wrong because inherently this demographic does not like situation comedies per se enough to watch them on their own or with friends and because, at 2:45 in the morning, they are not watching TV but either in bed or out at raves.

Fourth is the writing.
It seems that John started writing this script at least 4 years before he was born. As this has been clearly written by a 16 year old. The jokes are neon signposted in the worst way. Not in the "Oh! He's not going to... he HAS!" good way but in the "I am sure this was done better in..." way. Here is a synopsis (with where the jokes may have come from in bold) so warning: here be spoilers!

There is the young couple who are content with staying in together with a mug of hot chocolate each, but have friends who say they are boring. Their friends consist of the other couple made from a boy who has had an indecent dream about another girl (who is a lesbian) and a girl who enjoys clothes and another girl who is zany (note blue streak dyed in hair and nose stud). There is the young boy who has tracked down his donor and homosexual father (Neil Morrissy, as depressed as I have ever seen him... how did it come to this? You were once in Boon man!)[My Two Dads] and is trying to convince him to take on the fatherly role. There are the two community officers both portrayed as overweight simpletons. Then there is the Inn Keeper who is in a wheelchair [Phoenix Nights] and his younger, buxom wife.

For no discernable reason the Inn decides to host a Macguffin disco and the main characters all agree to go.

The young couple to show they are not dull. The other young couple for him to take her out to make up for the dream he had. The zany girl because she is zany (she says she is not going because she is off the drink - whilst drinking a pint - that's misdirection - that's what makes that joke funny and also a little like magic [Derren Brown]). The young boy because the Inn Keepers wife showed him some cleavage to get him there. The Inn Keeper because he is the DJ (hilariously he says things like "Selecta" to show he down with the kids [any one of 50 other situation comedy's]). The community officers because they secretly like one another, romantically, but wont admit it to one another.

Right so that's the context. This is how they all end up in the final 10 minutes:
The bored couple decide that their boring life is what they like and go home to watch Midsommer Murders. With possibly hilarious consequences [John Nettles might get a joke in his script].

The other couple fall out (with the girl discovering how hot the lesbian is) and make up (with the help of the lesbian humilating the boy by getting him in a compromised position [American Pie 2]).

The Zany Girl snorts a shot of whisky and tries to seduce the Inn Keeper because she has a thing for DJ's regardless of their age, paralysis and catheter requirements (which, as another joke, the Inn Keeper reveals he doesn't need but is just obscenely lazy - which brings up, for me, the question, can he walk too?).

The Inn Keeper's wife, for no sensible reason promises the young boy a feel of her body if he agrees to wear a man-kini from the film Borat [Borat] in an oversized bird cage and dance. He agrees to the outfit and the cage but not, strangely, having gone that far down the path of humiliation, to dance. The Inn Keeper's wife encourages him by electrocuting the bars of the cage causing him to spasm and the crowd in the disco to copy his moves [that Budwiser advert about the man being the designated driver]. He is then rescued by a sleep walking Neil Morrisey dresed as Richard Gere from An Officer and a Gentleman [Officer and a Gentleman].

Finally the two community officers have not made it to the disco. On picking up the male officer at his flat, the female officer produces a freezer bag of tablets, "My sister says they are disco cookies". Deciding that they must be small so they don't fill you up before going dancing the two eat a few ('cos their fat). And side-splitting montage of them jumping about on pogo-sticks and skipping with hula-hoops ensues. You see, the tiny cookies, were actually illegal hallucinogens that they are having the time of their lives on.

But the final scene is what put me over the edge, at 3:15, this morning.

The episode ends in the morning after the disco, with a hooded youth trying to break into a car down a street. Now, the street is full of parked cars - a red Peugeot 106, a couple of older Fords - but what does the would be thief try to break into with a butter knife? A new Mercedes. Utter nonsense. He wouldn't try to jimmy open the door of that. Anyway, he notices the officers and runs away, unsuccessful, with the car alarm going off. The officers give chase, but because they are unfit, only manage to get to the car. And because they are still under the influence of their disco cookies begin to dance to the alarm's hardcore rhythm.

To cut and paste a joke from the peerless SPACED into this shambles is too much. This is sacrilege. This is horrific. This is what will be shown in the communal TV room of Hell.

And as I sat with the sunlight beginning to stream through the thin curtains and watching something which had been done 11 years ago and done better [episode HELP, Series 2], I thought, is this it? Is this as good as it got - 11 years ago? Is this what we are left with? Then I knew how Neil Morrissy felt. Heaven help us all.

Erwin Schrödinger in relevance to tabloid story shock!

For anyone who missed this strange tale this week reported on the News, here it is, is my own words:

The Japanese Government decided to visit a man in Tokyo on his 111th birthday with a cake [they actually did bring a cake] to celebrate his record years of longevity. Their suspicions were raised when his granddaughter answered the door and wouldn’t let the Government in: “He doesn’t want to see anybody”, she said.

When the Government insisted (“But we brought this cake!” they paraphrased) and then got the police involved, the granddaughter relented and let them into the house.

Turns out the man was dead. Had been for 30 years, according to specialists. The mummified body was found in pajamas lying on the bed. The family had been collecting his pension (totaling some £70,000) all this time.

“30 years ago he went into his room to meditate and said not to disturb him” the family offered as hopeful bunkum to the Government [who were now regretting the wasted effort of 111 candles they had lit on the cake – I would think], “We believed he had become a sort of Buddha or something.”

How would they think that this was ever a plausible explanation?
Not seen Ethyl from next door for a few days? Maybe off visiting family. OK.
A couple of weeks? Perhaps on Holiday. Right.
4 months? Probably became a spiritual hermit? Hmmm.
30 years? Definately attained true enlightenment of the soul. Definately doesn't want to be disturbed. But how is she surviving? Tinned food. Oh.

Now I can see how that could be plausible for someone to believe - but this bloke was in their house. No, not having that.

Agreeing, the Japanese Government said afterwards through mouthfuls of Victoria sponge: “The family must have known he was dead. It’s so eerie.”

Their only mistake in the perfect pension fraud – allowing the dead body to become Japan’s oldest living man. Classic schoolboy error.

The Government, now paranoid of their long-lived statistics (there are over 40,000 centurions recorded in Japan which, now you mention it, does seem almost artificially high), have began to visit the very elderly. Just to double check. They [this is true] visited the officially longest living woman in Tokyo, a lady who should be of 113 years. “Oh!” the daughter, nodding, exclaimed to a now, I’d say, increasingly bemused Government Official, “I’m sure she is still alive out there. Somewhere. No one has seen or heard from her since she left this house 1986.”

Japan – many wonder at how people there live such long lives: Oriental mysticism and strict discipline of the body in perfect balance or... well... maybe not so much?

It's like catching the train that you didn't want to take EEEOOOO!

There are some times when only the day before I would not have believed I would have written a sentence I am about to. And this is one of those times.

I saw the Jesus of coat hangers at lunch time today.

3000 welded coat hangers into the image of Christ and stuck to a ply crucifix. As the wise hair-full crone from the woods, Alanis, once sang probably, “Isn’t it Ironic, don’t you think? When you’ve got 3000 coat hangers and all you need is a nail. EEEOOOO EEEEEEOOO!”

You know what is ironic, Alanis Mmoorriissettee, that your brand of yodelling woman encouraging pop rock directed at girls to take control of their own lives, be empowered and be spunky in relationships was actually the future for a while, I even bought into it, such as it had permeated into our lives and radios. We were all Gilmour Girls together. And now look at it. Now we are here. Teenage girls all just want to be WAGS when they grow up. WAGS or paid with McDonalds Big Macs for services rendered.

Anyway…

I went over, stood next to the artist just after the unveiling and took a couple of pictures on my phone camera of the 9ft tall sculpture and it made me think. It made me think, you know what I want to do as soon as I get back to work? Make pipe cleaner dinosaurs.

That would be ace!

I could have a whole menagerie of pipe cleaner dinosaurs all on my desk by the end of the day.

But would my manager let me spend a mere 4 hours doing that – no she wouldn’t.

And possibly best not to be sat, hands busy manipulating pipe cleaners into dinosaurs under my desk… I can just imagine the discussion I would be having at Human Resources with my line manager soon thereafter: “Honest, I was simply making a pipe cleaner stegosaurus. I was being surreptitious! No, I don’t find stegosauruses particularly sexy. Certainly no more than a diplodocus. Of course I’ve thought about the girl in accounts, what’s that got to do with it?”

Sometimes I get the feeling that my job adversely constricts my artistic endeavours.

Confessions of a blogging fiend

I’ll be honest, I came here to blog (and shamelessly paraphrase from what could be the greatest film ever made) about Quincy M.E. episodes and ridicule my sector blogging nemesis, Car. D’gan and his goddamn Corner – and I’m all out of Quincy M.E. re-runs.

But, also, Car. D’gan hasn’t posted any recent articles. Damn you Car. D’gan, damn you to Hades, I see you have won again. But my time will come, I can wait all night.

As for Quincy M.E.? As a result of the global economic downturn my local television service, of which Quincy M.E. was once a staple provider of, seems can no longer afford any episodes. This is now reminiscent of the great Poirot drought of ‘99. I am reduced to watching Monk. Monk.

It is as if the worst of Jonathan Creek has been infused with the comfort of an Ally Mcbeal episode.

I watched an episode the other week where detective Monk, our jocular OCD prone protagonist, is being filmed by a documentary team in solving his 100th case [don’t get me started on how they are sure that this case will be solved, the bizarre cutaways to popular stars playing versions of themselves saying how much they love Monk, let alone the fact that the cameras as part of the documentary require to clumsily double for the “unseen” cameras to let the viewer see the murdered victims and drive the secondary plot “asides” which would surely have all been edited out in the final cut of the documentary] and it is only when watching the documentary back on the TV that Monk notices that something doesn’t quite fit. It is making him anxious. It is making him do hilarious slapstick things due to his profound mental illness. 3 of the victims involved the serial killer, who he caught (though only just after the Killer’s suicide), but the 4th and final murder was very marginally different, in that it was located north and each of the other murders were progressively located south. Quickly, using the taped recording of the show he solves the 4th murder. It had been conducted by none other than the documentary show’s presenter. He would have got away with it too if it hadn’t been for the fact that the camera had caught him not looking when he turned on the lights in the room where the final body lay, strongly suggesting that he had been there previous (and in no way taking account that light switches are almost always located at the side of doors) doing some murdering [Columbo, incidentally, shows how a plot device like this should be done in the episode "A Bird in the Hand..."]. Well, that and his breakdown and immediate confession in front of a house full of Monk’s police guests who were helping to celebrate his 100 solved crimes. Then the guests tell Monk that he can’t retire: he has now solved 101 crimes and everyone knows he has to stop on round numbers.

Simply ludicrous.

In any case weren’t there already 102 solved murders before the 4th victim? Is a serial killer committing one crime of many victims or multiple crimes? It’s very ZEN, that. I might use that when I am trying to get to sleep at night.

So this Blog is like a cheap re-rewrite of what it should have been. It is all T.J. Hooker and talking about things I ate in the 1980’s. It disgusts me, truth be told.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this for you and I. Our relationship was never meant to have a cult character called Lobos the Robot in it. Now look at it. Lobos is the best thing around here.