I didn't quite catch that...

Last week’s episode may have been merely good, tonight’s was back to the Sopranos norm: bloody good.

Not because anything particularly shocking happened, not because there was any particularly awesome dialogue. But because of the character and feel of the entire episode; the undercurrent and foreshadowing of much to come.

Most of this wasn’t conveyed in words, but in gestures and pauses, and in the fucking amazing music at the end. Not amazing in and of itself, but it’s placing set the mood for the end of the episode brilliantly.

This is what I’ve been waiting for for many months; this is why the Sopranos is so good. Bring it on.

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Incidentally, what was Shooter McGavin doing in the Sopranos, eh?

I’ll be honest: I’ve not been enjoying reading Twenty as much since he’s been so focussed on the General Election. Mainly because my interests and hopes for that election were quite different to his.

But that election has come and gone, and that means that there is more to be discussed than boring politics. Yes, we now get a return to proper piss-taking of politicians.

In this instance, it’s all about Ian Paisley Junior being a cock. Or at least being a silly, silly person. And there are corresponding calls for his job to go, for official censure, etc etc.

Because of what he thinks.

Not because of what he does, but because of what he thinks. Not because he’s not doing his job, not because he’s shown to treat gay persons differently to straights, but because he doesn’t like what they do.

Needless to say, I’m in agreement with Twenty:

Now, many people have called on him to apologise for his remarks but why should he? If he truly believes that gay and lesbian people harm society isn’t he perfectly entitled to that view, no matter how ridiculous and prejudiced it is?

Why yes, yes he is entitled to that opinion. It’s in his head, not in his actions. If he is found to be treating people differently because of that opinion, then by all means rap him over the knuckles; until then, piss off and find something real to get worked up about.

Because if you disallow him his opinions, then what will prevent every other opinion going the same way? How long until that other long held opinion from Twenty becomes null and void?

Personally I’m repulsed by politicians. I think they’re wrong. I think those people harm themselves and – without caring about it – harm society.

And if that bothers you just shove it up your hole.

+1 to that comment, by the way.

It is only by tolerating the opinions we disagree with that we can be sure our own will be tolerated. You can ridicule them, you can try and dissuade them, you can ignore them, but making an opinion cause for censure or dismissal is starting down a very slippery slope.

You know, a lot of people are currently writing off Microsoft. Apparently open source has beaten them back, and Web2.0 is killing them off.

Yeah. This I will believe when I see it. But I digress.

One of the big claims thrown Redmond’s way is that they’re no longer innovating; they’re merely refining existing products and hoping that the revenue will keep flowing.

Then they go and blow that theory out of the water by releasing Surface, which is so unbelievably cool that I really wants one, despite having no possible use for it¹.

el Reg calls it Minority Report-style computing era, but it’s actually a bit cooler than that, especially if the wireless/Bluetooth functionality works the way it looks like it works.

So, in summary: it’s new, it’s scarily ahead of what others are doing, and it doesn’t have an Apple logo on it.

I really wants.

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¹ – Unless they manage to translate Command&Conquer type games onto it, which would rock almightily.

Many, many thanks go to the weather gods for keeping the wind to reasonable levels and for delaying the rain until what needed to be done was actually done.

And what was there needing to be done? Well, some months ago, I received, as a gift, a little piece of paper that looked surprisingly like this:

Which pleased me greatly. And resulted in me phoning about a bit, and then arranging a little jaunt down to this part of the world:

Whereupon I met a South African dude, pushed about a wheelbarrow that cost around £115,000, and then got to control this little baby:

‘course, I didn’t really control it; I merely got to use the cyclic while the collective and the pedals were looked after by someone who knew what they were doing. But I did get to play with direction and speed, and much enjoyment was had.

Apparently, learning to fly one of the wee Robinsons is only cripplingly expensive, rather than fatally expensive as I’d assumed. This means that only one kidney and a third of a liver would need to be sold to fund it… And if I work hard enough at it, they need not be my kidney or liver…

For reason that may be explained later, I am less than impressed with this weather forecast.

I demand clear skies for this afternoon. In fact, if it would be kind enough to stay as it is now, I’d be mighty appreciative.

And I’d like to thank the weather gods in advance for their co-operation.

I have a sibling who, despite my best efforts, quite likes the MG TF. I know, no accounting for taste, but then she also dislikes toffee so her opinion is not treated in the highest regard. Anyway, she does have something approaching a reason for this liking; said vehicle did look quite nice on a previous attendance at Silverstone.

Now, there wasn’t much chance of her buying any car then, or for a good few years. But she was quite set on owning one of the stupid little things at some point in her life, which was why I was not totally distraught by the prospect of none of them being made ever again; perhaps she could be pointed in the direction of an actual sport car, and not the not-at-all lovable MGF. And, for a time, it looked like this might happen. There were mentions, rumours really, of her liking being transferred onto a much more interesting car, the RX-8. This met with my approval, for the RX-8 is a very nice car, and offers limitless opportunity to deploy the word Wankel in everyday conversation. The Japanese, it seemed, had rescued my sister from the dreaded grip of Longbridge.

And then the Chinese screwed that up. They’ve started making the bloody things again. Now I have to start a serious misinformation campaign to make sure she hears nothing of this unwelcome development, because I’d much rather be borrowing a nice Mazda than a bloody Rover…

You know, I do so want to give our local politicians the benefit of the doubt. I mean, by comparison with being ruled by Whitehall or Peter Hain, it would take serious work to look bad.

Of course, some of our local politicians are trying their best. Between the blatant populism and the rampant refusal to face fiscal (or, in fact, any) realities, there’s a lot of opportunity for those who seek to make Gordon Brown look like a good bet.

One of the clearer examples comes from the assembly member in charge of education, who, while talking of the 11-plus, spake thusly:

She said it had “done enough damage already” and she would not prolong its life after the final test in 2008.

Yes, it has done immense damage; it has given people with brains the opportunity to go to a damn fine school, regardless of their background, post code or ability to pay.

Damn it for that, don’t people realise that there’s class warfare to be waged here? How can the Good Fight™ be fought if people go about disregarding class boundaries by using such criteria as ‘ability’ when making choices? How stupid can they be?

Let us restate the IDQCT… opinion of the 11+: it ain’t broke, do go breaking it just to replace it with something much, much worse.

It makes me feel unclean, but I’m starting to think that maybe, maybe, the cocks that run USian networks may have been not-totally-wrong in one of their recent cancellations. Because Studio 60 is back from their unscheduled hiatus, and there is steam leaking all over the show as the machine trundles towards the end of its life.

Yes, the witty wordplay is there, yes the actuing is still damn good, yes the concept is still strong. But this episode was a tad weak, and if Sorkin can’t get one whole season to be consistently strong, then maybe it shouldn’t be given a second season. The first season of West Wing was superb throughout; the first season of Sports Night was much better. Studio 60 started strong, but hasn’t kept it up. And I don’t know if the talk of cancellation caused the quality to drop or vice versa.

Either way, I’m not happy with the cancellation, but I’m also now not happy with the show either. Dammit.

On the plus side, having CJ on it was a good touch. Because CJ rocks.

Over the last several years, I’ve been saying that, since the nannies have now won the fight against the evils of cigarette smoke, they’d be turning their attention towards drink. First off, there’d be voluntary warning labels; then there’d be mandatory warning labels.

Check, check.

Then there be specific advise against certain groups using alcohol in anything more than tiny amounts, which would then change to at all.

Er, check.

So, what do you think will be next? Tax hikes, obviously, because that’s what Gordon loves and understands… But I also think there’ll be more high profile propaganda, more tax money spent on educating us evil alcohol drinkers that we’re oh-so-very-wrong. Another study or three pointing out the effects that alcohol has on those who aren’t drinking alcohol (’tis only a shame that there’s no such thing as passive drinking to grab attention). Then there’ll happen to be a few high profile cases where people sue brewers, publicans and the like because little johnny was overcome by the evil advertising and thought it was sensible to drink a slab of Stella and then try juggling knives. So advertising drink will suddenly be banned…

By which point, of course, the trails with smoking diverge. Because it’s not practical to grow your own tobacco, really. But home brewing, on the other hand…

(and thank god for it, sez I. But then I would. Now where’d I leave that beer…)

… as the lovely red cars failed to shine.

All in all, not a terribly good race; no interesting passing moves, no real shunts, no spectacular explosions. Some excellent driving on display, to be sure, but Monaco seems to have lost a little of it’s charm since the drivers stopped piling into the first corner with gusto from the start.

Ah well.

No? Then I pity you, and I think you should seek professional help.

If, on the other hand, you do occasionally just want to see something that’ll put a smile on your face, then you should probably have a gander at Pulp Muppets: it does exactly what it says on the tin. Pulp Fiction (which is always good), done by muppets (and not the kind I usually refer to on this site, the actual puppets).

It’s as Tarantino would have wanted…

Aparently, there’s a couple of minor funding issues within the NHS, requiring the deployment of cut price techniques.

Apparently, the waiting list to use this particular scanner is longer on the staff side than on the patient side. And I really can’t think why.
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As I recall, the point of the Freedom of Information Act was to see what decisions government has taken, how they reached those decisions, and what effects those decisions have had. Which, despite my earlier misgivings about the whole thing, have turned out to be mighty useful.

In fact, it’s possible that it’s a little too successful. So much so that neutering is being considered.

Minister Alistair Darling wants tighter restrictions on the Freedom of Information Act, the BBC has learned.

The Trade Secretary is concerned that it does not sufficiently protect advice from officials to ministers.

Er, is the whole point of the thing to ensure that such advice isn’t just hidden behind closed doors for ever? So that people can see what’s happening? So that we have a tiny amount of hope that “Yes, Minister” was a comedy, not a documentary?

Clearly this is not in the best interests of either the ruling party, or the loyal opposition, since lots of both are busy exempting themselves from the more burdensome aspects (you know, the ones about freedom of information).

Which leads nicely onto a lovely piece of NuSpeak:

“We don’t want to restrict [the Act], we want to make it better.”

But better for whom, my dear sir. Better for the 60,775,592 of us who are not MPs, or for the 646 that are? Because I suspect that it’s the latter, and that doesn’t work out very well, percentage wise…

Despite the unnecessary delay posed by some voting nonsense down South, The Sopranos is back on RTÉ. This pleases me greatly.

Season 6.5 seems to be starting on the slow burn, which doesn’t particularly please me.

In some matters, it would appear that I am wiser than some fictional wiseguys. This pleases me. The wise-ness is this: I know that Monopoly can be a nasty, brutish and violent game, and that’s when the players are sober. When drunk, much more nastiness could be expected. Certain characters don’t seem to notice this.

But we’re now in the end game; we’re counting the shows until the end. And this really doesn’t please me.

Does the day end in y, do you think?

Oh, it does. That must mean another farking stupid idea coming from Whitehall then.

Wait for it, wait for it…

Yup, here it is.

People who fail to recycle household rubbish could have to pay more than those who do, under plans to cut waste.

Environment Secretary David Miliband wants English councils to be able to bring in charges – and to give cash “rewards” for those who recycle.

Now, how do you think this would be funded and enforced? My guess is that the funding comes from setting unattainable targets and making nearly everyone pay more, but I’m a cynical sort. And the only way that this sort of thing could be enforced would be by tagging each and every bin in the land.

Bad ideas all round, really. Clearly, government is not content to keep a track of us, of where we drive, of what we buy, of who we choose to associate with, of who we phone, of what internet sites we visit, of what services we use, etc, etc, they’re now really keen on seeing how much we throw out and what sort of rubbish it is.

What’s next, meters on the sewage system? “Mr Hillan, you contributed more than the state-mandated level of crap this week, pay up!” Hang on, I didn’t say that, I don’t want to go giving anyone any ideas…

As you may have assumed, I’m not keen on the state being able to easily tag everything I do. Which is why I suspect that I may find this post quite useful in the not-too-distant future…

A successful rancher died and left everything to his devoted wife. She was determined to keep the ranch, but knew very little about ranching, so she placed an ad in the newspaper for a ranch hand. Two cowboys applied for the job. One was gay and the other a drunk.
She thought long and hard about it, and when no one else applied she decided to hire the gay guy, figuring it would be safer to have him around the house than the drunk.

He proved to be a hard worker who put in long hours every day and knew a lot about ranching. For weeks, the two of them worked hard and the ranch was doing very well.

Then one day, the rancher’s widow said “You have done a really good job, and the ranch looks great. You should go into town and kick up your heels.” The hired hand readily agreed and went into town on Saturday night.

He returned around 2:30 am, and upon entering the room, he found the rancher’s widow sitting by the fireplace with a glass of wine, waiting for him.

She quietly called him over to her.

“Unbutton my blouse and take it off,” she said. Trembling, he did as she directed.

“Now take off my boots.” He did as she asked, ever so slowly.

“Now take off my socks.” He removed each gently and placed them neatly by her boots.

“Now take off my skirt.” He slowly unbuttoned it, constantly watching her eyes in the fire light.

“Now take off my bra.” Again, with trembling hands, he did as he was told and dropped it to the floor.

Then she looked at him and said: “If you ever wear my clothes into town again, you’re fired!”

Ah, the old jokes are still the best.

There is a certain lack of inspiration affecting this blog at the moment; you may have noticed. One or two more email forwards are appearing; posts certainly seem to be shorter and even less original than usual. This annoys me.

But I just, at this particular moment in time, am having difficulty in getting too worked up. It’s not that there’s any shortage of things to write about, or to think about, or to dance in the street while singing ‘I told you so’ about. But I’m just not in the mood for attacking them.

But I was taught well: when you can’t be bothered writing anything original or new, produce a list. Lists are great.

So, here’s a list of things that I could, I suppose, blog about, but just can’t really be arsed:

• Football. The end of the season had such promise; there were many, many games that had such promise and just failed to live up to them. Both the FA and Champions League finals were so damn depressing. And Man U lost the FA cup. Bah.
• Another bad idea stumbles. Who could have seen that a (bad) idea, which had its primary (bad) purpose removed to be replaced with a new (bad) ecological purpose, would fail to be implemented on time?
• Another big government IT project fails. Yawn, this isn’t news at all, this is like the Italian football results: easily predicted.
• Recent encounters and some random videos are leading me inexorably to the conclusion that I’d really quite like a dog. However, I live in an end terrace in a city and work quite a lot. Having a dog isn’t practical. Boo to that.
• Lots of otherwise sensible people in the South of this island seem quite content to vote for a load of Marxists. This makes no sense to me. The only reason that the entire country isn’t bankrupt is because certain steps (like lowering taxes, for a start) were put in place, yet plenty of people seem to think that all that should be undone. Huh?
• How could I not blog about the upcoming investiture of St. Gordon of Brown to the throne of the UK? Because it depresses the fuck clean out of me, that’s why.
• How funny is it that, following all the talk of the importance of power sharing, the power hungry folk up at Stormont have quickly realised that they don’t actually have that much power to share? They can’t raise taxes (thank fuck), but they can’t cut them either. They can’t increase spending (ditto), but they won’t cut it. They can’t do anything, really, because of the aforementioned St Gordon being a tightwad. Which counts as the second good thing he’s ever done.

But I can’t be bothered looking at any of those points enough to make a proper post out of any of them¹. But I do see a bit of silver lining in the distance. One is that I’m getting a bit into the new job; I’ve worked out a list of things wot need doing, and it goes onto four pages – this is a good thing; I’d much rather have too much to do than too little.

And secondly, this weekend sees a little motor race which should be fun. Especially since it’s the first race there I’ll see since I got to drive some of the course. Lets see if any of those fools in thousand horsepower monsters can be the time I set in a heavy BMW shitheap diesel…

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¹ – First person to say “but sure you’ve never made a proper post of anything” gets a free gesture. Betya you can’t guess which one…

… and the result ain’t exactly hitting the spot, either.

Lifted from Adele:

You Are a Pegasus

You are a perfectionist, with an eye for beauty. You know how to live a good life – and you rarely deviate from your good taste. While you aren’t outgoing, you have excellent social skills. People both admire you – and feel very comfortable around you.

Hah. I’ve an eye for beauty, that much is true. And this ‘not outgoing’ comment would be acceptable. But each and every other description there is so not me.

And, lets be honest here. If I was to be a Pegasus, I wouldn’t be bothering being some four-legged freak. Because, for sheer coolness, the real Pegasus walks it…

Not content with already being the most trusted public figures, the judges of the country are busy doing their damnest to get things done right with MiniJu.

See, for some reason, they’re concerned that putting the judge, jury and executioner all in the same department may not be the wisest course of action, especially when recent governments (back as far as I can remember) have so little regard for the judge/jury bit and are much more fond of the executioner bit. Because, y’see, careful deliberation of the facts and consideration of due process do not sound good to either the mob or the press, whereas the clunk of a prison door is always comforting. So judges are worried, and with reason, that funding and attention will be shifted from their area and into the punishment side of things.

Oh, and they’re also a tad concerned about the constitutional foundation upon which the system is based. But this government doesn’t have a long history of caring too much about such things, so that won’t get anywhere near as much attention…

Anyway: well done to the aged, out of touch folk in silly wigs. For having the balls to stand up and say: “Sorry, but this is silly and I’ll be having no part of it. Go back and do it properly, please”.

It’s really a breath of fresh air. Albeit tinged with l’eau de old folk…

Not a question I’d usually ask, but I think that asking the BBC bod behind this article would be entertaining.

So, BBC bod, what did you do at work today?

Well, lil’ Jimmy, I tried to pack in as many subtle digs as I could at a fat American. I’m particularly proud that I managed to get a very subtle mention of 9.5 tonnes; that took a lot of work.

Personally, I think it’s disgusting, unnecessary and downright rude. And the childish behaviour of the BBC bod is a tad rude and all.

Boo-tish.

Yes, yes, I’m going, no need to hand me the coat…