Tag: Entertainment

Unpaid Endorsements

Entertainment

For those who haven’t yet seen it, do yourselves a favor and try to find the Brit TV show The Last Detective, starring the brilliant Peter Davison as “Dangerous” Davies.

It’s a funny, gentle show about a lovable loser (who is mocked, abused and ill-treated by his boss and colleagues in a police station, not to mention his bitch of an estranged wife), but who somehow comes out on top because he just will not give up an investigation, or anything else for that matter.  (I have to say that his meekness irritated me at first;  but stick to it and you’ll be joyfully surprised when you learn that sometimes, nice guys don’t finish last.)

I may just buy the DVD set when I have a few spare pennies dug out of the sofa, because Dangerous is one of my favorite TV characters of all time.  (Yes, my DVD player can handle PAL format.)

In similar vein, there’s Vexed  (on Netflix), which in the first episode has the funniest opening scene ever.  Season 1 also stars the unbelievable Lucy Punch (Dinner With Schmucks  and Doc Martin, also only Season 1).  Funny and occasionally surreal situations.

3 Inexplicable Things About Female Interior Design

3 Inexplicable Things

Continuing our series of stuff that makes you scratch your head, we come upon the following:

  • Pillows, dozens of.  Why do women insist on piling pillows and cushions onto beds and couches when they serve absolutely no purpose?  FFS, it’s come to the point when before getting into bed or sitting on a couch, you first have to toss half a dozen extraneous pillows or cushions onto the floor, like you’re uncovering layers of sediment in a geological study.  (A sub-segment of this is women who put a hundred teddy bears on their bed — are we still seven years old?)
  • Wall tattoos.  You know what I’m talking about:  signs that portray utterly banal shit like “Be Joyful Today” or “Happiness Is A Choice”.  The most extreme exponent of this awful trait is Joanna Gaines of Fixer Upper  fame.  She’ll do a decent job of decorating a room, and then add some bullshit about “Fall In Love With Life”, just to undo the whole thing.
  • Having a “tidy” kitchen.  Meaning that all small appliances and such have to be dragged out of a cupboard somewhere, plugged in and used, then put away again.  I can understand this if it’s not something you use every day, but stuff like coffee machines, toasters and kettles too?  And nothing repeat nothing would drive me crazier than having to scratch around for a fucking breadboard every time I felt like a sandwich or some toast.  Whenever I see one of those kitchens that is spotlessly clean, immaculate, and empty with only a bowl of fruit on a counter, I think it reveals a character flaw on the part of the woman of the house.

Feel free to add your pet designing peeves, in Comments.

Ah, Hell

Entertainment, Resistance

Sarah dun a goodie.

It’s not from her, but from a movie she just watched:

“You can’t walk [away from] your own story.”

And if you want to watch Rango  (again) after reading her post, then let that be your movie recommendation for the weekend.

I just wish I knew whether this is my own story… I need to get to the range again soon.

New Cards

Entertainment

Oh, this is going to be good:

For the first time in over 85 years, Monopoly’s 16 Community Chest Cards are about to get a “long overdue” refresh, Hasbro announced Thursday.
According to the Monopoly website where players may vote, card options include rescuing a puppy to get out of jail free or being penalized for not recycling your trash.

Here are my suggestions for the new “Community Chest” cards:

     
 
 

And just for laughs, here are a few replacement “Chance” cards:

 
 

And one more update, this time to the board itself:  the “Free Parking” corner space

is replaced with another of these:

There’s no such thing as free parking anymore, and with all the new laws which keep getting added every year, your chances of breaking one and being sent to jail are a lot higher than when Monopoly was first designed.

Feel free to add your ideas in Comments.

Because That’s Why

Bad News, Business

As Britishland begins to emerge ever so slowly from its Chinkvirus lockdown foolishness, businesses are being allowed to open, one sector at a time.  Which leads to squeals like this:

Gym boss spending £20,000 a month furloughing staff slams Boris Johnson for reopening pub beer gardens before fitness centres as she asks ‘why isn’t health a priority?’

Here’s my problem with arguments like this.  Instead of arguing the unfairness of pubs opening before gyms and wanting gyms to be given preference, she should be asking why gyms and pubs shouldn’t  open at the same time.

And it’s all about the definition of “health”, isn’t it?  I for one resent the assholes who think that we should all be physically healthier — whereas there’s an equally- or even more-important “social” health, that of companionship and shared good times that would be improved by the opening of pubs.

Moreover, just from a pure numbers perspective, I bet that there are untold millions of people all over Britain lining up to go to their favorite pub — or any pub, for that matter — whereas there are only a few thousand (largely) urbanites waiting to go and hit the treadmills.  If there’s a utilitarian argument (which seems to be what the unkempt Boris Johnson is following), it’s that opening pubs will give pleasure to the greatest number of people — and that if there’s a priority, it should be to the general public rather than a relatively-small number of smug and self-satisfied health-obsessed scolds.

Here are the two arguments:  “Go to the pub and have a good time” vs. “Go to the gym because you should be fitter (unspoken:  you overweight slob).”

No prizes for guessing which argument will (and should) win, every time.

Colonial War

Africa, History

Over the years, many people have written to me asking about early South Africa, and more specifically about the Boer War (or, as the Boers called it, the Vryheidsoorlog, or [Second] War of Freedom) from 1899-1902.

A few days ago, I found an old 1992 documentary on BoobTube, and it’s not bad — only just a tad over an hour — and it covers the period quite well, and impartially.  So that’s your weekend viewing assignment.  (There will be a test.)  If any questions of history remain, write to me and I’ll put the answers up in a follow-up post next weekend, when I’ll talk about my family’s relationship to the war.

There are three books I’ve always recommended on the topic:  Rags of Glory by Stuart Cloete, and the book it’s partially based on, a campaign journal called Kommando  written by Deneys Reitz, a wartime Bitter-Ender (you’ll get that explained in the video above) who went on to become the Deputy Prime Minister of the unified South Africa.  Both are absolutely brilliant — Cloete’s book also incorporates a view of the Boer War from the British perspective, and it’s both accurate and illuminating.

The third — an actual history book — is The Boer War  by Thomas Pakenham, generally regarded as the sine qua non  of historical sources for the conflict.  Written during the late 1980s, it’s devoid of any hint of the political correctness which infests later works on the topic.

Enjoy.