Behold! Now in Electro-Colour!

I was sitting at my first Blue-Ray disc feature film the other night. Whilst watching the enhanced clarity and sound on the sleek widescreen LCD set, my mind wandered. The plot, I found, not so enhanced by the new media. I recalled back in 2004, when my Grandmother’s eyesight was failing, a friend offered their old set. It was “large” they said. Provided a pickup could be arranged, it was free to a good home. Granny was very excited. Queue me firing up the ol’ Volvo and putting the pedal to the metal: Motown blasting from the radio/tape player.

On arriving to collect the television I had to concede it was a large set, but really that was by a technicality. The technicality of the cabinet style casing. It was a monolith of a device. Truly, I would not have discounted it being a radio sideboard from the 1930's where some crazy man had cut into it a small window to see the small orchestra inside. It was more processed wood than screen. It weighed a tonne.

Like it was on the boot of a Datsun Cherry, a 3D plastic label permanently affixed on the unit’s brow proudly boasted “Now in Electro-Colour”. It had the fantastic audacity to actually have it in moulded italics.

Other features included 4 buttons for a possible 4 television channels. Of course, back when it was new, the idea of 4 channels I am sure sounded like a far off future, like the concept of sexual harassment in the workplace. Given this was pre-Channel 5 CSI Sundays then, at the time of me assessing it, I’ll concede not having the capability of mistakenly switching to Channel 5 actually could have been seen as a feature. Further, it had a slide toggle for volume adjustment of the speaker hidden behind a black grill. Or to pretend you were powering the house up to Warp Factor 8. [Not that I ever did that around the house – covertly turning every dial and pushing all levers in the hope of making the house go… faster. That would be madness. Anyway, back to the story…] it had a knob under the volume toggle which, for all I knew, may or may not have been to alter the radiation emitting levels from the valves.

“It has a smaller screen than what you already have” I said, “It doesn’t have a remote control, not even one from the early 80's attached to a wire”. Taking one look at it, Granny responded, “Aye!” then, running a hand across the top, “But look at the surface, I could pit a lot o’ things oan that!”

The surface area, I could not doubt. It did have a lot of surface potential. And Gran ate her breakfast off that TV for many happy mornings.

EI AANIIGOO 'AHOOT'E

I happened upon, and how I did so remains a dreadful and altogether murky a thing to be sure, a UFO library in Scandinavia. It collects all the texts, ephemera and disclosed government documents and newspaper cuttings of Unidentified Flying Object sightings, alien abductions and general contacts with the Spacemen that it can. And it is exactly how one of these places should be.

The small library is run by only a few volunteers – their sparse biographies (I assume you don’t want to give too much away without some kind of probing) whilst simultaneously dispelling the notion all Scandinavians are models but Uber-Geeks have that unhinged look in their eye and penchant for Nerd-Shirts the world over, conjure up the best of people who would commit their spare time and possibly their chance for true happiness in their lives to this type of thing:

The person in charge of the Library describes himself as 75% of the time a manager in a furniture store. There is a volunteer who has worked in the library for many years and now claims to be an open-minded sceptic on the subject of Alien Abduction and also has a “vast personal collection” of material regarding Swedish unsolved crimes. Another describes his real job as a reviewer for websites and the UFO Library Newsletter and has written 3 novels (all unpublished); he sites his other interests as the study of Satanism, the religious interpretation of aliens and computer games. The Librarian, brilliantly, merely states that she is “an old age pensioner” (this throws up the suggestion that she is either being kept her against her frail bodied wishes as the others mistakenly think she is a Grey Wrinkly or, more likely, that she is simply warm there). Finally, there is one full-time volunteer: in her spare time she writes X-files scripts continuing the series for herself, in all of which she "figures prominently". Of course she does.

If I was an Extra-terrestrial going to go to a volunteer run UFO-logy Library then these are exactly the people I would expect, even demand, to meet. They sound ideal for this sort of thing.

“Take me to your leader! Oh right, Ok… and how much of a percent has he been managing his store so far today? Ah, I’ll wait.”

I would post the link to their catalogue but they have only just managed to buy a PC with their Earth Pounds and I suspect may be hooked into someone else’s dial-up connection rather than the Borg’s central computer as I believe I managed to exceed their bandwidth and it crashed almost immediately. Or did it?

CSI New York v Quincy M.E.

My crazed and obsessive watching of CSI: NEW YORK has not been as healthy a hobby as you might think.

On Saturday morning I was cheered to see a Quincy M.E. double bill coming onto the screen. Quincy came across what looked like a simple vigilante gang murder that should have been just allowed to be brushed under the carpet by local sheriff, but Quincy decided to use the “fascinating world of forensic medicine” to prove just who was the killer and bring them to justice.

And it was pitiful. I watched as Quincy and Sam just used a piece of yellow crime string to trace the trajectory of the bullet. They didn’t use a laser pen once! Back at the lab, they didn’t even build up a 3D image of the bullet shard that they could walk around and manipulate with an electric glove to confirm the gun barrel it was fired from. They just used their eyes to look for gun powder on a sleeve of a denim jacket. And when the killer turned out to be one of the gang members who had been a main character throughout and not some character only briefly on screen at the beginning of the episode I realised that Quincy and I would never be the same again.

Then the next episode was the worst episode I have seen yet. Quincy gave some very bad news to cancer patients and we all learned the dangers of genetic engineering. As Quincy pointed out, “Sam – do you know what I do when I see an organic pathogen I don’t recognise? I panic!”

Actually, that sweet talking Quincy might just have bought himself some more time!