PCs go PC

Oh dear god. Do I really live in a world, a country even, where people are this petty? Yeah, slavery was an awful thing, and there's nothing that Western civilisation can do to make up for enslaving millions of Africans. But come on people, I don't think the computer industry had any particular political statement in mind when it made up its technical terminology. Jeez...what's next? A demand that the Italians apologise for the Roman Empire enslaving most of Europe? How a guy can get this worked up about hard drives when his President is plunging the world into hell, I don't know.

In other news, Dan and Rad will be pleased to know that Yoda is real and lives in Dorset.

We're off on a whirlwind Thanksgiving trip tomorrow. The big meal is at Meg's parent's house in Rochester, but Meg works the next day, so we're going down there, doing the family ritual thing, then coming back up all in one day. I'm sure I'll have at least one story to tell about the day. See you in a few.

Class War

Personally, I think university education should be free, if not for every student, then for those studying medicine or teaching. If necessary, the rest can get the same system of loans (rather than grants) that I got. Since, in theory, these people are going to be turning around and benefitting society in some way, then they should be supported by society (especially the teachers, nurses and doctors). An unpopular view, perhaps, but it's one I strongly believe in.
The British government have decided to further screw over the students of that country. This is not entirely unexpected, to be honest, as the UK university/college system is in a state of funding crisis, and something has to be done, or one of the best educational systems in the world will collapse. But I don't think forcing half the student population either into debt, or out of university altogether, is really the most sensible idea.
This article on the crisis enraged me, or rather one part of it did:

"...the key reason for the under-representation of working class students in higher education, particularly in prestigious institutions, is that few obtain the qualifications needed to apply..."

Now, to be fair, the author of the article does point out that if a working class background student does achieve the desired grades, they are "highly likely to go to university", and moreover that they will not be punished financially for going. But there's an age-old (in Britain, at least) class assumption being shown here, and that is that working-class people are thick. My Dad's a plumber, and my Mum is so unhinged that when she had a job, all she could hold down was cleaning. My uncle has done best for himself by getting into the funeral trade (and, it's whispered, the Masons), but he's the only one who could be considered non-working class. We're a working class family. We didn't have a bath for the first few years of my life, so we were allowed to go to the neighbours' house to use their bathroom. But at no point was it ever suggested that I couldn't go to university if I wanted to.
Since schooling is free in Britain, there's nothing stopping anyone from any background from getting good grades at school. Yes, schools in working class areas may have less money to spend on facilities and teachers, but that's no obstacle. My first school was still using slate and chalk when I got there.
I got decent grades (they could have been better, but sloppy marking ruined a lot of hopes for a lot of people that year), and put myself through university. I've ended up with a fine education, a great deal of pride in myself, but sadly a huge debt. Now those coming after me will be saddled with even larger debts, but I digress.
Working class people aren't stupid. They aren't lazy. Now perhaps that's not what the author of this article intended to suggest, but if so, make it clearer for Pete's sake.

I apologise for that. I try not to rant on here, but sometimes it can't be helped. I'm also annoyed that I've got one of those stupid colds that refuses to either go away, or develop into a proper runny-nose-and-sneezing cold that I can do something about.

Popular Actor Rapes My Childhood

He was inspired to take up acting because of three characters that he wanted to play. One was Thomas Magnum, one was Hannibal Smith, and the last was Danny Ocean. In 2001, he achieved his dream of playing that third character. Now George Clooney has set his sights on two of the most popular television characters from the Eighties.
Unfortunately, he's set himself a difficult task. Magnum is Tom Selleck, and Clooney is going to be hard-pressed to make the role his. If he gets into the spirit of things however and grows a bushy moustache, then he may pull it off.
The A Team will be the most difficult to pull off, however. In that case, you have four actors who made the characters their own, to varying degrees. I can imagine Clooney pulling off a decent Hannibal, since George Peppard always did seem to be the one out of the lot of them who was only there for the money. But even so, can you recast icons like the A Team? Here at Brainsplurge, we had a go!
Assuming we already have Clooney as Hannibal actually makes things a bit easier. Mad Murdock was the easiest to cast as we slotted a loopy Brad Pitt in there. These three films show that Murdock-style lunacy is well within his range. If Pitt is busy, a suitably crazy Michael Keaton would do the job nicely.
Face is a bit trickier to pull off. We want to cast someone younger than the others, but also someone who can pull off smooth and suave. Given the Clooney Connection, it's tempting to cast Mark Wahlberg or Matt Damon, but neither are really suave as such. So we're struggling here. One thing that may aid the casting is that there's no reason that the new team has to be all American. Obviously they can't be Vietnam vets anymore, and the most likely conflict that they took part in is Gulf War I, so we can conceivably cast a British actor in the role. In the end, a desperate search leads us to Matthew Perry, because we're having far too much difficulty.
Hardest of all is BA Baracus, because that was the role that required least acting the first time around. It seems pretty obvious that Mr T just turned up as he was, walked on set and Pitied The Fool. Clearly, no one plays Mr T like Mr T, so the solution is to cast someone who has a similarly strong screen persona. It may not be similar to Mr T's persona, but we're after a strong personality here, rather than an exact match. I'd love to cast Samuel L Jackson here, but even if we are changing the character to suit the actor, the difference between original and new is too different. So, we go for Ving Rhames. A completely different kind of big mean black guy, but he's still a big mean black guy.
As for supporting characters, we can safely dump Mexican Bloke and Robert Vaughn's Man-In-Plane (although if we did keep him, we'd cast Robert Vaughn or Gary Oldman if Vaughn was busy), as they were from the nonsensical end of the show. But we have to cast Female Fith Member Amy, and Hannibal's rival and nemesis Colonel Decker.
Amy is tricky, as most Hollywood women clearly aren't suited to gunplay and building tanks out of spare parts. So, we're going to be unimaginative and cast Salma Hayek or Eva Mendes in the role. Decker has to be seen as very similar to Hannibal, the kind of guy Hannibal would be if he followed the rules. Tommy Lee Jones is probably too old, and Bruce Willis probably wouldn't play a villain, especially one who is largely there for comedy relief. Give Tim Roth an American accent, or get Willem DeFoe in, is what we reckon.

In other news, my brother wants someone to get him one of these, and Neil Gaiman has insulted my home town (at the bottom of Sunday's entry).

Finally for today, Snowball has contributed my favourite name so far for the robot-man down there. Alphonse seems to me to be rather fitting.

What's In A Name?

I drew this little chap yesterday, since he's been rattling around in my head for a number of days now (click on the image to see a larger version in a new browser window):

Problem is, he doesn't have a name, so I'm opening it up to you lot. Be imaginative!

TATAKAE!!!

So our Tone takes the world's most dangerous alcoholic to a pub for lunch? Brilliant plan Tony.
Talking, as it were, of lunch and Emperor Bush, here's the most bizarre article I've seen so far of the visit: a review of the menus served at the various state dinners during the visit.
Finally for now, here's a site all about those crazy Japanese superhero TV shows that unfortunately led inevitably to the dreaded Power Rangers. Sadly, there's no info here on the...interesting Japanese versions of Spider-Man (Supaidaman), or Captain America. Ikkuzoo!

"Working with a baby had its problems, but then I tried directing chickens..."

Their president is being booed off the streets of London, an effigy of the man is being torn down in a pastiche of what the Americans did to Saddam Hussein's statue, terrorists hold their own, far less peaceful protest, and what does CNN have as its top story? Michael Jackson being arrested on child molestation charges. Sheesh...

Watched Labyrinth today, for the first time in years. I'd forgotten how good a film it really is. David Bowie's performance as the Goblin King was a lot better, and nowhere near as camp and kitsch, as I'd been led to believe, and I wouldn't be surprised if Neil Gaiman got a lot of his Sandman character from Bowie. That would certainly be fittingly ironic considering that Gaiman wrote the upcoming "sequel".
There was a pretty good "making of" feature on the DVD, but it was from the year of the film's release. I would have liked to have seen a more recent feature on there too, perhaps spliced in with the older footage. Jennifer Connelly, for instance, was a pretty useless interviewee as she was just a kid back then and as such was annoyingly polite and restrained. I'd have liked to have seen her speak about what the film means to her now, and an interview with the Henson people on how Labyrinth affected cinema, and so on. As I was watching the behind the scenes stuff, I spotted someone who looked just like Beverley Crusher. A quick check on the IMDB showed that before she flew to fame on the Enterprise, Gates McFadden was a choreographer for Jim Henson's production company. It's just a little strange to see her before she was famous, but still very active in the public eye.

My memories of the other non-Muppet Henson extravaganza, The Dark Crystal, are more favourable than my memories of Labyrinth were, so I shall pick that one up next, I think.

And finally:

Discworld: Which Ankh-Morpork City Watch Character are YOU?
brought to you by Quizilla

Which is handy, as I hadn't heard of 70% of the alternatives. Last Pratchett book I read was probably Soul Music. Actually, a quick check reveals that it was in fact Interesting Times I read most recently, if you discount The Last Hero. Anyway, I don't recognise most of these characters. So there.
Incidentally, I spotted this test on a blog I read regularly, but a quick search for that blog turned up nothing, so I Googled the test. I'd love to give you credit, whoever you are, for pointing me towards this, but I can't, sorry.

How About Some Politics? Some Satire Perhaps? No? How About Some Lovely Jam?

And now for some current affairs. This one came to me via Courtney and Liam. As Liam points out, it is "cheap, but amusing", but I'm all for a bit of Bush-bashing...um...

When George Bush was meeting with The Queen he said to her:
"As I'm the President, I'm thinking of changing how my country is referred to, and I'm thinking that it should be a Kingdom".
To which the Queen replied , "I'm sorry Mr Bush, but to be a Kingdom, you have to have a King in charge - and you're not a King."
George Bush thought a while and then said: "How about a Principality then?", to which the Queen replied "Again, to be a Principality you have to be a Prince - and you're not a Prince, Mr Bush".
Bush thought long and hard and came up with "How about an Empire then?" The Queen, getting a little T'ed off by now, replied " Sorry again, Mr Bush, but to be an Empire you must have an Emperor in charge - and you are not an Emperor."
Before George Bush could utter another word, The Queen said: "I think you're doing quite nicely as a Country".

Disclaimer 1: I know, Bush would never be able to say "principality", but you have to allow it for the sake of the joke. Nor is he capable of as much thinking as this makes out, but you've got to let it go, dammit!

Disclaimer 2: If anyone would make the US presidency a hereditary position, it'd be Bush.

The Beauty Of Language

Normally, I try to keep this page all-ages-friendly, but I couldn't pass this one up, especially since that bear-thing is so cute:






What swear word are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Thanks to the splendiferous Snowball for that one. I think. I wonder what word Rad will get...

children black fingernails chop off their hands

Years ago, I remember that the Eurovision Song Contest was on the telly. I was too young to go out, and there was nothing else to do, so somehow I found myself watching it. God knows why. Anyway, one year, sometime in the early-to-mid eighties, they put on a film afterwards. Since Eurovision usually finishes at about one in the morning, I'm quite surprised I stayed up for this one. I remember an American school bus driving into a cloud of fog, and I remember children with black fingernails getting their hands chopped off. For years, I thought this was Children Of The Corn, until I saw it fairly recently and found it utterly devoid of black-fingernailed-killer-children. So I decided to enter children black fingernails chop off their hands into Google, and it took me to this wonderful site. I now know that the film is called The Children (close enough), and another part of my swiss cheese memory is filled in.
Now, if I could only place the horror movie set in a summer camp in which someone is killed on the toilet after the killer drops a hornet's nest into the cubicle, as well as the film in which a teenage girl is terrorised by a spectral black samurai, I'd be happy as a clam.

Bush and Becks

Here's a fun piece. The Guardian asked a number of people to write a letter to Bush, in honour of his visit to Britain. Letters to Santa, if Santa was a power hungry monkey man. They make entertaining reading, for a number of reasons. The bizarre denial exhibited by the right-leaning writers is fun to read, and the newspaper chose poets, comedians and writers to speak for the lefties, making their contributions entertaining reading.
Changing tack somewhat, I'm a fan of toys. I have toys all over the place, but even I'm having trouble getting my head around this one. Very, very odd.
I (finally) received issue 21 of the excellent the O men yesterday, and have still not quite recovered. This is consistently one of the best comics around, and this latest issue raised the bar even further. A superb issue full of shocking revelations and one shocking word that Rad is fond of using. Collected editions are available now from the website, and I heartily recommend picking them up.