Curses!

Comedians are ruining everything!

The other week it was the season finale of Spooks , a show that I rarely get to watch because the ABC puts it on at such ridiculous times. I decided to stay up and watch it this particular Friday however as the plot involved the Thames Flood Barrier – a feat of engineering I’ve always generally approved of, and the flooding of London, something I’ve generally approved of (at least in fiction) ever since I started reading FreakAngels.

(And yes, readers in the UK will at this point be scoffing and making general noises of disdain about how the Thames Flood Barrier episode is old and how the UK has got much better episodes now and Australia is so backwards. Well, when it comes to the ABC’s showing of Spooks I wholeheartedly agree.)

Anyway at one point during the episode one of the characters – the one who lost his wife a while back (I see the show so rarely that I don’t know the names of any of the characters so that description will have to do) – is having a nervous breakdown in the bowels of the Barrier (do flood barriers have bowels?). This is indicated by the well established trope of fixing the camera on his face, and having him go spinning around and around, so his head remains stationary while the background whirls around wildly. An effective visual metaphor for a mind gone out of control.

Except that it didn’t do that for me. All I could think of while watching it was “da dadada da dadadada da da dadada da da dadadada da DA DADADA DA! These are the surprising adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar featuring me, Sir Digby Chicken Caesar in my ongoing quest to find my nemesis, some bastard who’s presumably behind it all…”.

Another perfectly good cinematic communication method ruined by comedians. Curse you Mitchell and Webb! πŸ˜€

The Continuing Search for my Nemesis

Television Redux

You know, I’m really enjoying Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which started its run here a few weeks back (it’s fair to say that it’s the closest we’re ever likely to get to River Tam Beats Up Everyone). Unfortunately however it’s already begun the slow slide towards the early hours of the morning suffered by all sci-fi on Australian TV. It began in a blaze of glory at 8:30pm Tuesday nights, stuck there for three episodes, went AWOL for a week, then came back at 9:30 this week. Before long it’ll drift to 10:30, then 11:25, and before long it’ll be on at 2:10am alternate Wednesdays and Tuesdays – when not bumped by repeats of the Red Shoe Diaries.

I’m also quite enjoying That Mitchell and Webb Look on the ABC (sorry! ABC 1!). Entertaining English sketch comedy with a touch of the surreal. There’s BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner, the Bad Vicar, the Lost Tribe of the Garden Center, and (best of all) the Surprising Adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar. I find the latter so amusing that I can hardly keep from bursting into gales of laughter every time I’m waiting to be served at Sumo Salad (which no doubt says much more about me than it does Mitchell and Webb).

Still on the subject of television, Channel Nine is rerunning Friends at 6:00 nightly. Sad to admit I was quite a fan of the show in its original run, so it’s nice to get home from work and turn it on in the background. For some reason though (probably to do with the earlier time slot) the powers that be at Nine are butchering the hell out of any even slightly risque content, leaving rather jarring jumps in its place…

Ross: What is the name of Chandler’s father’s all male drag review?

Rachel (leaping up): Viva Las!

(cut to Chandler looking disgruntled amongst uproarious audience laughter)

Chandler: Unfortunately that’s true.

…rather hard to follow I think.

On a more personal note I’m feeling rather disgruntled myself this week. Sam – who’s been doing a traineeship with up for the last 18 months or so – had decided to leave the company, tomorrow being her last day. This means that the office is going back to a dead-boring all male environment. In a previous entry moaning about the now-departed cute girl at the supermarket over the road I commented that starting the day with a smile from a pretty girl makes work a lot more bearable. It seems that that’s even more true when you’re actually working alongside said pretty girl. And in addition to any totally inappropriate pulchitrudinous aspects Sam is smart, efficient, a quick learner and generally pretty cool (not to mention that from the all important giant-personal-ego viewpoint she laughs at most of my jokes) so while I’m going to miss her on a personal level the company is going to miss her too. But hey, lunch on the company budget tomorrow, so it’s not all bad πŸ™‚

Additionally on the upside, feeling sad about something real – as opposed to just being generally depressed – is actually quite refreshing.

Well, now I’ve potentially opened myself up to all kinds of sexual harassment suits I suppose I’d better go πŸ™‚

PS: A quick web search suggests that while, strictly speaking, “pulchitrudinous” retains its meaning of “physical beauty” it has in the last few decades… taken on a connotation of, shall we say, a much earthier kind of appeal (thank you Wikipedia). For the sake of clarity I would like to state that in this particular instance I intended “pulchitrudinous” as a humerous, faux-pompous substitude for “attractiveness” and nothing more. You know, just to be perfectly clear πŸ™‚

PPS: The missing word is “Gaygas”

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