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Television

Hot and Saucy

Well… the extent to which I will discuss the last six days is: I’ve been working at the Hot Sauce offices on a Jonathan Ross show that is comics-related. I don’t want to divulge the subject until it seems appropriate to do so, but suffice it to say, I believe it will be a very interesting and worthwhile project.

Today, after a week of helping with research materials, briefs and arranging interviews, as well as contributing some questions for interview subjects, I was around for the shooting of some original artwork from Jonathan’s collection. JR had places to be, so I was quite honoured to be asked to stay around and help select which pieces to shoot. It was a fun day. On the whole, it’s been an enormously positive experience.
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Biology 101

Yeh, a regular posting frenzy tonight, but I just had to write this down while the window was still open… news item on TV about women in the workforce.

One middle-aged lady said: ‘I think women make the best Number Twos.’ (Poo, really?!)
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Listen to This

On the other hand, I heart my sound & vision system. My new DVD/CD player came today from Richer Sounds. Like the amp/decoder (also from Mr. Richer’s emporium), it’s a Sony model. The whole system, including speakers, as it stands, cost 240 quid, which is a good deal.

Sony’s name speaks for itself, but what I like about their gear is that they’re so user-friendly, and the manuals (for once) are really comprehensive and helpful (rather than the usual badly-written sketches in several languages). For instance, the player was not automatically sending a 5.1 signal to my amp, but the manual pointed the way in seconds. I have so many issues with instruction manuals that this makes a big difference to me.

The new player is impressing me a fair bit. While the old player was perfectly acceptable, the Sony’s sound output has a definite edge. I am hearing things on my CDs I hadn’t heard before. The amp is not a powerful one (you couldn’t shake the walls with it, but in a residential setting, this isn’t a great idea anyway), but I love the complete ‘wall of sound’ I can get from the set-up, which includes a cheap-but-effective sub-woofer.
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The Kids Are In Charge

Ho-hum. Opening of Parliament today, I see from the spectacle on TV. Isn’t this a summation of everything that’s wrong with politics? A grotesquely opulent, debauched waste of taxpayers’ money just to mark the mundane event of our overpaid politicians’ expensve holidays being officially over, and the reading of a speech by our outdated, superfluous, pointless, costly ‘monarch’ that she didn’t even bloody well write herself.

In a word: disgusting. I say this every year.

And worse than disgusting, fucking childish. Here we have a fellow given the nom de plume of Black Rod. Dressed as Widow Twanky, he goes up to the doors of the house, which, of course, ‘symbolically’ slams the door in his face (as he represents the monarchy) to declare their independence.
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And The Lost Plot…

Hmmm. Just watched Lost. Did see all of series one and found it reasonably entertaining, but only about four episodes so far of series two. (I missed the Doctor Who finale too! Not watching nearly as much TV lately. Maybe not a bad thing.)

Anyway, Lost is worrying me. Some of this episode was getting a bit preachy. I think it’s an aspect that’s always been kinda there, but not annoyingly so. What I’m starting to think, though, is that if this slow-moving show ever reaches some point of conclusion, the obvious potential outcome—they’re all really dead and stuck in some limbo; they finally get free and head off for Heaven/Hell—will be the one they go for.
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Stuff and Nonsense

Oh. Hi. Missed me, did you? I haven’t felt like writing anything for a while. There’s been some worry about mom’s health (there still is, but I’m not going into details), which has kind of sapped my will to write STUFF on here.

Or even Stuff and Nonsense… 😉

I’ve recovered a bit of faith in my drawing abilities, I think. I just completed my third NetworX strip as part of my “Networks” column for Comics International. They’re simple, dumb little things, but there’s satisfaction in creating effective staging within a mere three panels. You can’t say much; the challenge is making it count.

Hmmm. Now I have to do a drawing of Orson Welles for The End is Nigh #3. Mr. Ed is writing a War of the Worlds feature and has given me an ultra-ambitious description of the illo which I am going to stubbornly downgrade to something much more simple! 😉
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Oscars Comments

Just a few quick remarks. I was happy, on the whole, that Lord of the Rings did so well. The awards were for all three episodes, really, since it is one very long film in essence, the same as Tolkien’s story is one long book, merely split for convenience. I can’t imagine a project of this scope being done again anytime soon, so it needed to be acknowledged.

I felt a bit sorry for Bill Murray, but Sean Penn is great and deserved to be fourth time lucky.
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Testing Testing…

If this works, it means the site is working again. Lack of postings hasn’t been a sign of apathy, as those who’ve noticed the problems with the comments will know. Just technical trouble.

Damn, and I had so many brilliantly witty and insightful things to say in the last week. Sadly, I’ve forgotten them all now. 🙂
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He Ain’t No Human Being

I have to say that John Lydon is tremendously entertaining on the latest I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, in what is otherwise a pretty tired lineup. This, from someone who never liked the Sex Pistols. Then again, I had few thoughts about anarchy when I was seven or eight years old; the attitude probably seems more relevant today. Maybe I should go buy a copy of Never Mind the Bollocks…
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