Save the Wombats Lord, Kumbaya

What would we do baby, without us?

In an attempt to fill up the vast, rolling plains of airtime that have recently opened up with the onslaught of newly launched digital channels, the various TV networks have been pulling anything they can grab out of their archives, dusting it off, and throwing it on air willy nilly. As a result shows that haven’t seen the light of day in decades are now turning up randomly all over the TV schedule, often in back-to-back double episodes or in odd timeslots such as 5:00pm Monday to Wednesday, followed by 12:20pm Thursday, then 6:30am Saturday for the early risers. It’s historic TV madness!

One of these shows that has been dragged kicking and screaming off the shelf is that old standby Family Ties, the show that launched Michael J. Fox to stard0m and ensured that we’d never get to see Eric Stoltz drive a Delorean. Ah, the memories! The maddeningly catchy sha-la-la-la theme song! The curiously craggy face of Michael Gross! Ubu the dog with his frisbee! Good times…

But the thing that struck me most forcibly during a recent viewing was a scene that showed just how right L.P.Hartley was with his lunatic ramblings about shadowy umbrellas, hooded eyes and the past as a foreign country where they do things differently (and how!).

So, the titular family are sitting around in the kitchen when Alex (played by Marty McFly) gets a phone call from a girl. From the half of the conversation we hear it’s clear that this girl has managed to obtain tickets for some event. Once off the phone one of the parents (honestly I forget who, they’re pretty interchangeable) asks if said tickets are for Barry Manilow.

A joke of course – clueless parents totally out of touch with the music young people are into, assuming that Barry Manilow is somehow cool enough that their son would be clamouring for tickets. But no. No canned laughter rings out. The Manilow comment is passed over without comment, the actual joke is that the tickets Alex is so excited about are to a lecture by a famous economist.

The only logical conclusion is that in the early 80’s cool kids went to Barry Manilow concerts! Or at the very least TV scriptwriters thought that cool kids went to Barry Manilow concerts. Madness!!

Ancient TV aside, the old black dog has been stalking me quite efficiently recently, to the point that I’d very much like to spend my days curled up in a fetal position, weeping quietly under my bedsheets. Unfortunately it’s been too hot for that, so I’ve had to pull myself together and come into work instead. I’ve been doing my best to deal with it by subverting my angst into fantasies of extreme violence against everyone who has ever crossed me. This is startlingly effective but hardly qualifies as a long term treatment plan. I did manage to get my bike fixed however so I’ll try some needlessly aggressive bike riding instead and see how it goes.

That’s all for now folks!

Hellish

Satan Built My Website

Deville’s Pad may be a fantastically cool venue, but their website is hellish.

Graphics optimised for a white background on black, horribly compressed maps and menus (to the point of near illegibility) and completely built in Flash so you can’t select/copy any of the text or open anything in a new tab.

It’s horrible. I don’t know what they paid for it but whatever it was they got badly ripped off.

(By the way, the design is great – it’s the implementation that’s jaw-droppingly bad).

A Reading from the Book of Truth

All are the three and of the three

The document now known as The Book of Truth was discovered in southern Namibia in 2004, apparently having been deposited by a temporal wormhole of the kind now known to spontaneously occur in that region. Although the date of authorship is unknown, temporal studies have suggested that it originates from at least 4oo years in the future, and (based on isotope readings of the ink) was probably produced in east Asia.

The document is in the form of a slim booklet, hand written on coarse paper, bound with a leather cover fastened with clasps of poor quality steel. Carbon dating of the paper suggests that the document is between 100 and 150 years old. It is written in a language barely recognisable as English, displaying a heavy influence from a south Slavic language – most likely a dialect of Croatian. Translation of the text has been hindered by the fact that the metal components of the work are highly radioactive, whether this is an effect of the time-travel process, or due to environmental factors at the point of origin is currently unknown.

What translation has been possible suggests that the work is religious and philosophical in nature. Extracts from the first two chapters (which are divided into numbered verses) are presented below.

Chapter 1
1: All in creation is composed of the three, and the three are that which is Good, that which is Evil and that which is neither, and the names of the three are potos, ekos and notos.
2: In the moment of creation was made hadaz, the water of the heavens. And hadaz was formed both good and evil.
3: And hadaz did beget the stars, and the stars did beget all. The metal and stones, the air and waters, all that is living and non-living.
4: And all are the three and of the three.
5: Potos and notos shall gather together as a fly in the temple of the wise. And ekos shall weave around them a veil.
6: And the veil shall be many layered and the outmost veil shall be most highly regarded when complete.
7: And the ekos within the veil shall be where it is not, and none that knows where it is shall know where it will be, for there it is not, though it is.
8: And all that is real shall ascend.

Chapter 2
1: That which is light is strong, but that which is heavy is weak and its weakness will be shown when struck.
2: That which is the heaviest is the weakest and in its breaking is poison, but the poison may be harnessed by the wise for acts of power.
3: But the poison of the breaking shall last for a thousand years and corrupt the earth and vex the wise.
4: For it is not the power of the stars, and the power of the stars and the blending of the hadaz shall evade the very wisest.

Odd

Life After the Apocalypse with Power Armour and Demons and Tube Stations and Things

7 Mate (as Network 7 is insisting on calling it’s third channel) is promoting the series Life After People with that picture from Hellgate London.

You know, the one that curiously distorts the layout of the city to get the maximum number of devestated landmarks in?

With the game shut down and all I don’t know what the copyright status of the image is, but it seems like a strange choice. I mean the series is Life After People, not Life After the Apocalypse with Power Armour and Demons and Tube Stations and Things.

Odd.

Close Bitnami banner
Bitnami