Friday Ephemera
Pong for the feet. || Forbidden love. || Flushing decisions. || Meet your new neighbours. || Windows of San Francisco. || One way to do it. (h/t, Obo) || The ice is singing. || Two salaries. || For the ladies, some Russian gangster glamour. || Young Romance, 1949. (h/t, Holborn) || Every reason for Dr Banner Hulking-out in the 70s TV series. || The cost of light. || Look closely and you’ll see the light from a single excited strontium atom. || Escaping the lab while the humans sleep. || Wine glasses of note. || Equality now. || He does this better than you do. (h/t, Tim) || Decorative and slightly dangerous. || And finally, “The former Chief of Staff of Iran’s armed forces said that Western spies had used lizards which could ‘attract atomic waves’ to spy on the country’s nuclear programme.”
Sorry Captain Nemo, but I simply cannot stop laughing. Was this event recorded for posterity?
Well, Spiny Norman, I’m happy my Christmas memory has provided you with a certain amount of amusement. I’m quite relieved to say, in answer to your question, that it wasn’t filmed for posterity, and so I shan’t be appearing on You’ve Been Framed any time soon. Thankfully.
Note the clarity of the brine.
Is that brine or vodka? ‘Cause…never mind…
Not quite ephemeral, but near enough: anyone in the UK with access to David Hare’s Drama Collateral should absolutely make a point of watching it – it’s an absolute scream.
I mean, it is just so unbelievably and laughably awful I just can’t stop alternating between laughing at it or shouting ‘No! No, you’ve got to be kidding me!’ as yet another predictable cliche stumbles its way into view like a half-drunk pantomime horse.
All the leads are women – except that they’re not really women, but different sides of that feminist fist-pump symbol dressed in clothes and wearing the faces of various famous actresses.
In the space of about 20 minutes you come across three permanently irascible and angry women – a pizza shop manager, a well-to-do chain-smoking alcoholic single mother, and a lover – each one of which is seen continually scowling, scoffing or scolding anyone every man in 10 feet of them to demonstrate how in control they are (naturally all the men are pathetic simps or jolly fat guys).
And then there’s an elfin-like 30-something Carey Mulligan as the lead homicide detective – but naturally just being a lead homicide detective is not enough, so she is also about 6 months pregnant; also – it turns out – a former pole-vault champion; and also a former high school teacher. She drifts regally around the screen like swan princess.
To cap it all, the “professional” contract killer who commits the murder that kicks off the drama is an Ann Coulter lookalike – make of that what you will.
Oh, and then there’s Nicola Walker as the conflicted lesbian C of E vicar and her young-enough-to-be-her-daughter illegal immigrant Vietnamese lover who’s terrified of being deported yet enters the story coming back from a night out clubbing with a pocket full of speed.
I mean it’s such utter bollocks.
The only male lead is played by John Simm – and like the women he’s not a character in any normal sense of the word in a drama, but an ’emblem’ – but what he apparently embodies is the Labour Party.
No, really – this steaming turd of a drama really is not only that bad, but that transparent. Says the angry woman who is his latest lover:
Look David, you just have to decide what you want – has it never occurred to you that Labour may not even get back? That there might be another Labour government?
And then when it turns out he’s the father of one of the children of the well-to-do chain-smoking alcoholic single mother, the metaphor becomes so cringingly obvious I couldn’t stop laughing.
I would love one day to see an honest fly-on-the-wall documentary of how these things go from script to screen and how no one ever seems to have looked at the plot or the rushes and said: “Wait a minute – I think this might be a bit shit?”
What you need, Nikw211, is a good book. Stand by, please. After Easter I’ll be recommending some.
I am still pondering a name for the blog. I wanted to name it in honor of our leader here and call it “No Refunds, Credit Note Only” but that sounds like a “consumer” blog. I can give you a consumer blog in 10 words: Don’t waste your time trying to use coupons at CVS.
Prepare to fry!
http://crazyrxman.blogspot.com/2018/02/on-monday-we-work-but-today-we-laugh.html?m=1
@Farnsworth “…was a cultured artist” I see what you did there. Very funny 🙂
@pst314 “have as many women possible attend pub lunch in order to dismantle [the] hegemony and reclaim the space as open to all.” And the men there will love it, or won’t notice. And will then get blamed for it somehow.
@Nikw211 “The only male lead is played by John Simm” That’s a disappointment, I like him.
Look out skeezy artists and art critics, you’ve been found out! https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/feb/19/hannah-gadsby-on-the-male-gaze-in-art-stop-watching-women-having-baths-go-away
Australia’s ABC doing what it does best. See also https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-abc-just-deleted-an-analysis-piece-by-its-chief-economics-correspondent-that-attacked-the-case-for-corporate-tax-cuts-2018-2 where an ABC journo wrote a story so clearly partisan and off-the-point that many people from the Prime Minister down demanded it be removed or reworked. Look at the tweet by the journo at the bottom of the linked article – it’s classic. #justsaying
@David Taylor
It’s always both amusing and astounding to see the leftists in high dudgeon about lower corporate tax rates. It’s as if they believe that all the tax savings is reduced to tangible cash and piled in a barn someplace where the chief-executives frolic naked with hookers, instead of going to shareholders in increased dividends, employees in increased wages (both of which are taxable) or capital investment. These people view economic decisions as occurring in hermetically sealed containers which have zero effect on anything else.
@R. Sherman I’m no apologist for the big end of town – being very jealous of how much money they have. If I were to end up there I’m pretty sure there would be some amount of frolicking of some sort, you know, just to celebrate having made it. I’m also all for our tax dept chasing tax fraud with vigour, both personal and businesses.
My beef with the ABC journo was with how apparently biased and badly researched her piece was. I used to like the ABC a lot more but as I get older and more conservative I find it more and more frustrating.
That tweet just capped it off. No-one seems to be able to defend the original article so it can’t have been award-winning standard. And I’ll bet she’s paid an eye watering amount of money for this expertise.
I mean, it is just so unbelievably and laughably awful
Interesting data point. In the US, consider the following two cable specialty networks: The CW, and the Hallmark Channel. The CW runs some 12-15 prime time dramas with A-list TV actors, using currently popular Warner Music artists as background music. All of their shows are stock Hollywood millenial progressive agitprop, with the usual diverse cast template and cliched “blended family” plotlines.
The Hallmark Channel has three TV series in production and pads out the rest of the schedule with TV movies adapted from romance novels. Their shows also follow a template: there are no gay characters, no non-white characters, no politics, no drugs, no sex, no violence and very little conflict drama. What relationship drama exists is always started by a female character who is depicted as overreacting or acting foolishly, and she is inevitably set straight by a stoic-but-kindly male character.
So far, so opposite ends of the spectrum, right? Here’s the interesting detail: the Hallmark Channel viewership ratings exceed The CW in every time slot, every day of the week. And that does account for online and other non-broadcast viewing (although not video piracy, obviously).
Atomic lizards, Israeli spy vultures, Mossad spy sharks?
That’s nothing.
They say that the aliens created “watchdogs” for Saddam. The aliens took ordinary desert scorpions and used their bio-engineering to grow the scorpions to giant size. Scorpions of a cow-size! They are wonderful watchdogs: they blend in with the desert, swiftly and silently move on their warm-blooded prey for a decisive attack. Luckless intruders hear just some strange sound from behind stones, then a pincer crushes their necks, another pincer crushes their legs; then the victims is slammed to the ground and beaten with a barbed tail six or seven times. Death comes almost immediately.
http://www.pravdareport.com/news/russia/31-01-2003/21198-0/
They say that the aliens created “watchdogs” for Saddam.
As Saddam could not be reached for comment, I’d say the aliens need to go back to the drawing board, or somebody needs a refund.
It’s always both amusing and astounding to see the leftists in high dudgeon about lower corporate tax rates. It’s as if they believe that all the tax savings is reduced to tangible cash and piled in a barn someplace where the chief-executives frolic naked with hookers, instead of going to shareholders in increased dividends, employees in increased wages (both of which are taxable) or capital investment. These people view economic decisions as occurring in hermetically sealed containers which have zero effect on anything else.
That’s one of the more perfectly executed pieces of irony I do believe I’ve ever seen.