Uncategorized

Yes, I Think It’s Shite Too.

Cruel but horribly accurate, from The Register:

Under Torch Wood

A parody for voices
By Verity Stob Published Monday 6th November 2006 11:46 GMT

FIRST VOICE No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own;

SECOND VOICE Ahem. Hold on there, Richard. Wrong script.

FIRST VOICE I do beg your pardon. My mistake. I thought you were Jeff Wayne for a moment. May I have a glass of water? Thank you. Here we go.

To begin at the beginning. It is a wet, windy, winsome winter evening over the Cardiff bay development; the headachy halogen and sour sodium lights tickling the glinty, greasy, newly-repointed-and-polished-up-nicely cobblestones and reflected and redoubled in shimmershivering puddles.

It is late; and the many and variously architected towers, domes, angles, spikes, aspects, canopies, canap?s and protuberances crouch unadmired in driving drizzle and the garish orange fog of electric allnite-everynite twilight.

Only you can see the mercilessly, migrainishly floodlit Norwegian Church, still cute as a baby mushroom, still astonished and agog, as though it has fallen here out of Disney.

Only you can see the baseball-capped Sennedd building, home of the Welsh Assembly, staring blindly out into the botulism-bobbing bay, dreaming dreams of passing baffling bilingual byelaws with which to befuddle the enemy.

Only you can see the beetled carapace of the Millennium Centre, its cryptic inscription illuminated in huge hostile letters, simultaneously making no sense in two languages:

CREV?GWIR?IN?THESE?STONES
FEL?GWYDR?HORIZONS

O?FFWRNAIS?AWEN?SING

Only you can see these things. Well, only you, half-a-dozen webcams and 318 CCTV security systems.

Come close now. Zoom in, chopper-shot to crane-shot, down over Roald Dahl-As-We-Expected Plass and its mobile phone mast fountain and, deep, deep below, in his secret underground headquarters,

SECOND VOICE Captain Jack,

CAPTAIN JACK
Hi. I’m Captain Jack Harkness.

SECOND VOICE the insomniac bicon; snug as a hobbit, pretty as a choirboy, immortal as carbon dioxide, wooden as a horse. He is passing the small hours sweeping up pterodactyl droppings,

CAPTAIN JACK
They get everywhere.

SECOND VOICE and cataloguing his prize collection of alien artefacts,

CAPTAIN JACK
One off gadget for choosing the quickest queue at Tesco, check. And one off purple wig for a girlie going to the moon, check. And one off bottle of stuff for getting pterodactyl pturds off greatcoats, check.

SECOND VOICE all the while humming the ten tenets of the Torchwood creed under his breath \

CAPTAIN JACK
Separate from the government,
outside the police,
beyond the United Nations,
independent of the judiciary,
not voting in council elections,
distinct from the Brownies,
non-members of the AA,
think iPods are rubbish,
cancelled the milk,
no TV licence.

FIRST VOICE Up above, it is nearly dawn. Through the grille-shuttered windows of the swanky caf? district you can still see chair-leg-spikey tables and quainty-dainty chalked pavement blackboards, safely stowed for the night

CAF? SIGN Llanfairfach giant maggots, fresh in today! Organic? Of course!

FIRST VOICE and down by the waterfront, a swirling squall of pick-n-mixed rain and seawater soaks Police Sergeant Nye Thyme and WPC Efa Ng as they proceed flatfooted along the promenade.

WPC NG
F*ck me, I’m wet through to the b*ll*cks! What was that?

SERGEANT THYME
The watershed, you b*tch.

Read whole thing

I didn’t like the first episode of Torchwood at all (looked too much like it was made by the Cardiff Regeneration Company for promotional purposes) but I decided to give it three episodes on the off-chance, which really is as much as mortal woman can be expected to bear.

The wooden acting, terrible camera work and the total dogs breakfast of art direction – not to mention the clunky script, ham-fisted direction and general lack of zip- was bad enough. What did it for me was the sexed-up cyberwoman with the prominent tits and bum-cleavage, in a costume that looked like Anne Summers’ conception of of a naughty SFnal night in, made from gaffer tape, bits of old She-Ra costume and cannibalised hoover tubes sprayed with Hammerite.

Though the exploding head was rather good, it didn’t make up for that stupid Ianto character’s chewing up so much scenery he needed 3 fillings and a crown replacing. Overall, and it’s got to be faced, despite my best hopes Torchwood is utter shit.

Read more: UK TV, Science Fiction, Dr. Who, Torchwood

A Cataclysmic Fight To The Death

That’s what the President has promised if the Democrats win. But true to form they’re striking preemptively; Republican electoral misdeeds’re coming thick and fast now.

From Brad Blog:

Yesterday (11/04), about 1pm MST, I rec I rec’d a phone message from the Republican Party of NM telling me that my polling location was John Adams Middle School. My polling place is usually Longfellow Elementary about 1 block away. John Adams is about 7 1/2 miles away. In my horror and disgust I quickly deleted the message.

Thinking that maybe my polling place changed, I then called the **Republican Party** here and simply asked if they could tell me my polling place. They asked my address only, I told them, and they said, “You vote at Longfellow.” This is correct and I hung up.

About 5pm MST, the Republican Party of NM called AGAIN and left a message elling me that my election day polling place was West Mesa High School,even further away than John Adams. They gave the full address and zip code. My Caller ID shows REPUBLICAN PART.”

I DID NOT DELETE THIS MESSAGE.

Then around 7pm MST, the same thing happened. The Republican Party of NM called and left a message telling me that my election day polling place was back to John Adams Middle School. My Caller ID shows “NEW MEXICO VICT.” I did a Google search on the phone number and this entry came up:

New Mexico Republican Party :: CalendarSummary:,Contact your local county party or call the Victory Office at (505) XXX-XXXX to find out what you can do to help our 2006 Republican candidates. ?

I DID NOT DELETE THIS MESSAGE.

If you want the actual phone numbers, I can give them to you.

I’ve heard that this has been happening in other parts of the country, and I want to help get the word out that it’s happening in NM. I called TV news stations, contacted the newspapers, and progressive talk show hosts. I’m warning people to be on the lookout. Please help me spread the word.

Full story

Apparently a local judge issued an injunction against the Republican party’s doing this very quickly, by cellphone at a basketball game. A hearing was scheduled – but the Republicans claimed that the calls were ‘innocent mistakes’ and the injunction’s now been lifted.

Multiply this one instance of shady doings by the thousands of voting districts that the Republicans are trying desperately to hold on to.

This election is going to be hellacious, and what comes after even worse.

Read more: US Congressinal elections, Republican dirty tricks, Voter suppression.

The Curse of The Tiny Penis

Back after a reasonably relaxing weekend, apart from the ongoing chest infection and hacking cough, that is. Deliberately, I didn’t listen to that much news because it’s predictably all-Saddam, all the time at the moment (just the way Rove planned it) and there’s bugger-all I can do about the Congressional elections anyway except to rant uselssly and pass on reports of the grosser voter-suppression and other panic-driven Republican outrages, which continue to intensify and spread as potential nemesis looms ever closer.

So while we wait for Wednesday let’s look at the contents of men’s pants. I’m not normally in the habit of googling men in their underwear (I prefer geeky and brainy men but they don’t generally impress in the buff. Ian Hislop in a jockstrap? Armando Ianucci in a leopardskin thong? Paul Merton in a …. Erk, no, Let’s not go there.), but this amusing little squib in the Guardian syle section tickled me.

The mere existence of these glorified y-fronts tells you all you need to know about male insecurity , that bottomless reserve of fuel which powers so much of politics today .

Padded pants: a good idea
?

Simon Mills

Monday November 6, 2006

The Guardian

Almost certainly not, I’d say. With pant stuffing, all you are doing is creating the undergarment equivalent of the Millennium Dome – something irrefutably impressive and attractive when viewed from the exterior but actually rather underwhelming once you get inside. Indeed, any form of crotch upholstery should be regarded with suspicion. It’s undignified, silly, a bit tragic and really just deceitful procrastination that will end in inevitable bitter disappointment for someone, somewhere during an evening.

But the Sydney-based Aussiebum underwear company would disagree. The firm is busy marketing the men’s equivalent of the Wonderbra – a range of Wonderjock (that’s “Ball/Extension Support Technology” – eeuw) shreddies designed to enhance a fella’s equipment using a configuration of ribbing and cantilevering. The makers call the pants a “revolution”, but really this is just genital origami, incorporating playful gift-wrapping and the notion that every man should wear his jockeys two sizes too small to give the impression of increased volume. Think “Hello Girls” – or “Hello Boys (Again)” – and you’ll get the picture.

Most gruesome of all is the “wondercup” pouch used to “separate and stop squashing”. “Lift” and “extend” I can dig (almost), and “squashing”, as caused by those skinny jeans Russell Brand favours, can force a chap’s rudebox to live in reduced circumstances (Brand recently confessed to stuffing socks down his front), but “separate”? Am I missing something? OK, so, there was a boy at my school who used to pull out his white trouser-pocket linings, yank his underpant gusset up between his testicles and shout, “Look out! An elephant!”, but I haven’t met anyone who desires separation provision in his choice of foundation garment since. Maybe I should get out more.

Crotch upholstery is almost as good a euphemism for pants as Jo Brand’s gusset-typing is for what polite women don’t do in public. Well, some do. Oh, you get my point, I’m trying to avoid saying masturbation in my roundabout, English, prudish way.

Tsk. Look what you made me do.

Anyway, I had to go and find a picture of these amazing architectural underpinnings just to see what made them supposedly so special ( or so I told myself), and I discovered that the political implications of these pants were much more profound than I’d originally thought.

Oh dear, oh dear.

I suppose that when little-willied men are propping up their fragile egos by destroying countries and indulging genocidal tendencies they need whatever extra testicular advantage they can get. I’d be really quite interested to see this company’s customer database; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to if there were be some very recognisable names on it, *cough*Mehlman*cough*.

I wonder if Aussiebum’ll notice a US sales dip after Wednesday.

Read more: Fashion, Men’s underwear, US Congressional elections, Political dirty tricks, Vote-rigging, Voter suppression, Male insecurity.

Breaking…

Saddam Hussein sentenced to death by hanging, BBC reports.

Read more: Saddam Hussein trial result

Objectively Pro-Baby-Killing

What kind of person would deliberately deny medical care to a newborn baby? No prizes for guessing. From Tenessee Guerilla Women:

Today the GOP snatches health care rights from babies born to immigrants, tomorrow they’ll snatch health care away from all the babes born outside of their gated communities.

Talkleft has the grim details:

All children born in the U.S. are United States citizens. But the Bush-signed Deficit Reduction Act that went into effect in July prevents Medicaid from covering health care benefits to those born to undocumented residents — unless the parents file proof of citizenship for the child, which is a catch-22 because the application form takes weeks or months and many of the immigrant parents don’t want to alert authorities to their presence here.

Hospitals are just now catching up with the law’s demands and doctors are justifiably outraged:

Dr. Jay E. Berkelhamer, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the policy ?punishes babies who, according to the Constitution, are citizens because they were born here.? Dr. Martin C. Michaels, a pediatrician in Dalton, Ga., said that continuous coverage in the first year of life was important because ?newborns need care right from the start.?

I really shouldn’t be shocked – after all, this is perfectly in character for a man with his upbringing. His mother refused to go to her own mother’s funeral, played golf on the day after her own 5 year old daughter’s funeral and kept his sister’s terminal leuekemia a secret from him.

This is a man who, when his own daughter was rushed to hospital for appendix surgery, jetted off on holiday to Florida with the rest of his callous family without an apparent care in the world. Compassion for children is not his strong suit, despite the frequent photo ops. This is no biggie to him.

But I am shocked. This takes callousness to whole new levels.

Read more: George Bush, Bush family, Immigration, Medicare, Child health