Friday Ephemera
Bit nippy out. || Banana-related breakthrough of note. || She does this better than you do. || His knife is sharper than yours. || Passionate exchanges. || Script Doctor recaps Picard with suitable ruthlessness: “Too bad the writers don’t think beyond the surface of their own ideas.” || Intriguing odour detected. || Disappointing soap. (h/t, Perry) || Upscale toasting. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Restaurant scenes. || Nommy nommy nom. || The thrill of sorting nails. || Achievement unlocked. || 85,000 British Pathé newsreels, 1910-2008. || A brief history of the URL. || Ice resurfacing simulator. || I did not know this. || Hands up if you own one. || Folded paper. || And finally, a slaughterhouse-related mishap.
She does this better than you do.
That can wind up coming back to you
And finally, a slaughterhouse-related mishap.
Frederick Wiseman, Meat
“Hands up if you own one”
Haven’t seen one of those in decades. Never bought one but admired the cleverness.
I have 4 and 5 year old grand kids. Got told off a couple of weeks back for teaching them how to make simple paper planes. Apparently the pointy bit “could take an eye out” and are “dangerous”.
Some good did come out of it though because I ended up finding this. Nakamura Lock Paper Plane They have a blunt front, hold their shape and fly much better than a simple plane if made carefully.
Next lesson will be Mentos in a warm bottle of coke.
Yeah, contour gauge. Have one from 1970 or thereabout.
One of the things about being a “the Fourth”, one inherits stuff.
#2 was a pump engineer in Chicago c. 1915.
#3 was a pilot and woodworker.
I use #2’s monkey wrench every week.
At least I only have 3 wood routers now…
Drinkwater’s Law: You’re never done until you’ve used every tool in the garage.
Drinkwater’s Corollary: Buying new tools makes things worse, not better.
Got told off a couple of weeks back for teaching them how to make simple paper planes.
You are a more patient man than I. Several years back my sister and her kids were visiting our parents when I went to the porch out back and rolled myself a cigarette. A few minutes later little nephew pokes his head out the door, and I hear my sister asking our mother where I went. So mom tells her, and so sister loses her shit, yelling at the kid to come inside like he was standing at the edge of a cliff above a river of venemous snakes.
I just looked at nephew, then at the door, and yelled back, “[SISTER’S NAME]! CUT THE PLAY-ACTING BULLSHIT!”
“Too bad the writers don’t think beyond the surface of their own ideas.”
Wait til he sees episode 8.
Guys am I just being a bit gumby or has Holborn gone?
Morning, all.
Guys am I just being a bit gumby or has Holborn gone?
No sign of his account. Not sure why.
Wait til he sees episode 8.
I hear that it’s now so careless, inconsistent and generally cack-handed that they’re already, in season one, retconning their own previous episodes. Which is quite an achievement, really.
Also, how many mysterious all-female organisations can one show have?
Holborn is back.
Oh good! I was worried he was another twitter purge victim…
Dear Mr D, I have been lurking for a couple of years and thoroughly enjoying the non-troll like discussion & comments of this site -so refreshing to have balanced comments & non-acceptance of hate filled vigilante opinionated & baseless attempts at indoctrination/brain washing/re-education. Yelling & screaming at a person has never seemed a cogent argument to me.
I shall be contributing to your tip jar (in the hope of a pickled egg), shall continue to lurk as I am IT illiterate and completely unable to contribute clippings or such as your other clever followers do. Perhaps I may stumble upon an interesting item & refer it to you for your magical touch in providing it to fellow readers.
In the meantime I shall continue to lurk, & hope to make some sort of contribution to the only sane people I can find left on this planet.
I shall be contributing to your tip jar
Your host wholeheartedly endorses this sentiment.
shall continue to lurk as I am IT illiterate and completely unable to contribute clippings or such as your other clever followers do
To be fair, and to avoid swollen egos, many of them also have drinking problems or terrible hygiene.
. . .retconning their own previous episodes. . . .
Actually no—barring some specific citation in mind, not what I was seeing— . . . this one was rather interesting; watching Borg switching themselves on and off was rather intriguing . . . and the quintet of holographs was rather cute, the actor there is clearly having entirely too much fun.
Script Doctor recaps Picard
“Picard is essentially a show about a 96 year old man pursuing a 20 year old woman, which seems more like a sitcom premise than one suited to science fiction”
LOL
the actor there is clearly having entirely too much fun.
I suppose it’s good that someone is. I can’t comment directly on the latest episodes. I gave up on Picard a couple of weeks ago as it promised only further disappointment and more undercooked ideas that go nowhere, or nowhere of interest, and are abandoned in favour of some other undercooked ideas. And there’s only so much fun you can have listing the various incongruities, needless convolutions and lapses in narrative logic.
But it seems to me that throughout the series Mr Kurtzman and his writers have been throwing lots of unrelated bits in a bag and hoping that somehow something will cohere and become interesting. Structurally, thematically, dramatically, it’s a shambles. As others have pointed out – and despite some contrived gushing in the woke media – it’s like watching bad fan fiction.
. . . it’s like watching bad fan fiction.
Hmmm. Rather than Wagon Train To The Stars, there could have been Conan, instead . . .
Disappointing soap.
Wait, what?
Wait, what?
I’m now picturing someone trying to shower and rub up a lather using a confectionery not unlike gritty fudge.
And which, on reflection, sounds pervier than intended.
Tim Worstall detects a tactical misstep.
Passionate exchanges
When I first visited the Middle East some three decades ago, I very quickly became aware that if not for the geological accident of crude oil, the entire population of the region would still be living in tents and making goat cheese. Those “debates” are simply a microcosm of their backwards Stone Age culture. The Greeks called them barbarians, and they were correct.
They are no less barbarians today for wearing tailored three-piece suits. Do not make the mistake of assuming they are civilized, because I can assure you from personal experience, both on the battlefield and across a business desk, that they are definitely not.
And which, on reflection, sounds pervier than intended.
Oo-er matron!
Drinkwater’s Corollary: Buying new tools makes things worse, not better.
WTP’s Rule Of Owning A Second Home:
You will learn that the tool or jar of unique hardware bits that you KNOW you have and have scene recently is located in that other house’s garage/barn. So you might as well accept your fate and go to the hardware store to buy another one/set/whatevs.
WTP’s Corollary:
Weeks later, when searching for a different tool/unique hardware bit at the same location you will run across the thing that you were looking for that you “accepted” was really at that other location.
“WTP’s Corollary:
Weeks later, when searching for a different tool/unique hardware bit at the same location you will run across the thing that you were looking for that you “accepted” was really at that other location.
Y. Knott’s corollary to WTP’s corollary:
The only way you will ever find the missing whatev’ is to buy a new one and then cut the blister-pack open so you can’t return it. This goes double for an item you had in your hand just this morning and need RIGHT NOW to fix the leak so you can turn the electricity/water back on, and three-times ~ the number of females in the house badgering you to get it working, they need to use the powder-room.
First-world problems can kill, on occasion…
yelling at the kid to come inside like he was standing at the edge of a cliff above a river of venemous snakes.
When I was a youngster, one of the moms in our swimming practice car pool was an absurdly anxiety driven chain smoker. Once a week we would all be loaded into her station wagon, with the windows rolled up, and driven 30-40 minutes to swim practice. Combine that with teachers who smoked, adult friends and relatives who smoked, etc. if there is anything to this second-hand smoke BS many, many more of us should have been dead years ago.
My mother grew up on Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh. The smoke and such from the steel mills blew that direction. There were times, depending on where one’s school was located, when children walking to school would be covered in soot by the time they got to school. My mother and her five closest friends all lived into their 80’s.
Now this isn’t to say that pollution, or even cigarette smoke, is something completely benign but decades and decades of greeny hysteria is probably causing more health problems than the problems themselves. Which is something I fear now more than COVID-19.
many of them also have drinking problems or terrible hygiene.
I keep hearing about Embrace The Power Of And. I think it’s a movie or a book or something.
I keep hearing about Embrace The Power Of And.
I didn’t want to push my luck.
The power of the Corollary:
I once could not locate a particular piece of yard plumbing that I KNEW was right THERE last week. On the way to buy a new one I mused that I’d soon have two. And sure enough, halfway home from the garden store i remembered precisely where the original one was. So now I have two.
I wonder what would happen, right now, if I tried to put my hands on them. Doesn’t bear thinking about…
it’s like watching bad fan fiction
I’ve alluded to this before: most genre fiction isn’t intended to be a Tolkienesque, internally consistent world. Most genre fiction is allegory, or at least mostly about a theme. This goes double for television, where writing decisions are made mostly based on what’s easiest and cheapest to film, rather than out of dramatic consistency. That’s why one of the worst things that can happen to a franchise is for it to fall into the hands of its fans; they have an emotional attachment to the details of the IP but miss the larger allegory.
Similarly, once Roddenberry died Star Trek stopped being about anything in particular, and became whatever show the writers actually felt like writing with the Trek trade dress slapped on top.
Ice resurfacing simulator.
I can write my name with it. #achievementunlocked
“Disappointing soap.”
Ooh, now I fancy a spot of tablet.
(The good stuff isn’t really gritty. The whole knack to making it is to get it to set without the sugar crystals growing too big, while still solidifying enough not to end up as fudge. Well, I say “knack”; it’s more of a black art known only to the initiated.)
“Upscale toasting.”
His toaster is better than theirs. I mean, he actually says so in the title of the video. Can’t argue with that, right?
“To be fair, and to avoid swollen egos, many of them also have drinking problems or terrible hygiene.”
Aw, c’mon… I had a bath last week.
“Picard is essentially a show about a 96 year old man pursuing a 20 year old woman, which seems more like a sitcom premise than one suited to science fiction”
Patrick Stewart’s good, but he’s no Reg Varney.
one of the worst things that can happen to a franchise is for it to fall into the hands of its fans; they have an emotional attachment to the details of the IP but miss the larger allegory.
You may well be right and it’s certainly easy to get enthused – or gleefully nit-picky – over fairly incidental details. Though whether in terms of arcane Trek lore or just basic storytelling, Mr Kurtzman and his team don’t seem to know what they’re doing. The structuring and editing are really quite bad. Again, the impression given is of ideas that aren’t developed or particularly related – some of which might have been interesting if handled by someone else, but which don’t sit well together or have any obvious or compelling reason for being in the same story. It’s not a yarn; it’s more of a pile.
It’s not a yarn; it’s more of a pile.
https://youtu.be/zRY1vnXgx9Y
Well, unlike most of these slackers here, SOME of us give 110%—we have drinking problems AND bad hygiene.
So there.
Ice resurfacing simulator.
Needs the wounded guy so I can re-enact this.
Hands up if you own one.
Yep, a small one I have used for a tile job and sorting some car body work. There is also a 3D version if you want to clone yourself
Terms that are now racist: blacklist, blackball, blackmail, Black Monday, Black Friday, Black Plague, black hole…
Time for me to revise my press release: The economic reforms I propose will put the budget back in the
blackAfrican American.“The power of the Corollary:”
The Comforting-Falsehood-of-Numbers corollary, a.k.a. If You Have It You Won’t Need It And Vice Versa:
There are certain items, yes tape measures I’m looking at (or more likely, for) you, that it does not matter how many of them you own; you can’t find one when you need it.
Hell, I own at least a half dozen tape measures, so I have a solution. See, most folks try to deal with the “why can’t i find that damn thing” problem by putting things away where they belong after use. My current scheme is more stochastic. I deliberately scatter them around so there’s USUALLY one nearby when needed. I learned this from my old workplace paper filing system.
Mr Kurtzman and his team don’t seem to know what they’re doing. . . . It’s not a yarn; it’s more of a pile.
A number of years back there was to be the next Bond movie, where that time someone(s?) came up with a story idea and then handed off to John Gardner for a novelization, and some production team for the movie. I got the novel, read through it, and quite looked forward to the movie.
In the novel, there is Bond against a drug cartel, in the middle of which is kindly old Professor Joe. Professor Joe is an archaeologist with a life mission of helping the local Maya, raising money for their aid—and oh, by the way, it’s during his TV broadcasts that the timing and location of drug deliveries is handled with coded messages.
In the movie, kindly old archaeologist Professor Joe, the quite aged and caring, was played by Wayne Newton.
The production results weren’t entirely at the level of utter and total fiasco as ”Spectre”, but License To Kill is one of three Bond movies that I only saw once and then just ignored because of the scale of the total storytelling screwups.
Mr Kurtzman
You know, I was wondering why I found that name so familiar. Turns out he was the one who totally piledrived Xena: Warrior Princess’ ratings before he was yanked and the show returned to its winning formula.
He’s been screwing up beloved franchises for some time, it seems.
License To Kill is one of three Bond movies that I only saw once and then just ignored because of the scale of the total storytelling screwups.
Thing is, generally speaking, I don’t think I’m overly nit-picky with entertainment – not usually. But good pacing is very important, not least because it can hide – or make an audience forgive – the occasional gaffe. For instance, there’s a pretty obvious mistake in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, regarding which ship is carrying the doodad to “catalogue gaseous anomalies” and which proves rather handy in the final battle. (At the very start of the film, it’s implied as being aboard the Excelsior but at the end it’s on the Enterprise. Presumably, during a script revision someone lost track of it.) But the film rumbles along quite nicely and has enough charm to easily outweigh the oversight.
Kurtzman’s Picard, however, really struggles with pacing, and charm, and fails to generate much in the way of narrative momentum – it feels unfocused, haphazard. And as a result, all of the glitches and blunders are that much harder to miss. We aren’t immersed, we aren’t losing ourselves in the story, and so we start noticing the joins and dodgy stapling.
[ Edited. ]
“To be fair, and to avoid swollen egos, many of them also have drinking problems or terrible hygiene.”
Aw, c’mon… I had a bath last week.
And I have absolutely no problem with my ability to drink.
(I was going to write “I have no problem drinking” but there are two ways of reading that.)
Terms that are now racist:
Wuhan Virus
I looked up Picard. The premise sounds decent. The writers must have worked very hard to screw it up.
You’d think by now, folks would know to leave their dead raccoon at the door.
Only in San Francisco.
This soap is terrible! I feel all sticky and smell like spoilt milk.
As an American, I demand a refund at once!
You’d think by now, folks would know to leave their dead raccoon at the door.
Only in San Francisco.
No, no, no, he was just helping with the menu.