A pox on all of their houses

Well, I think I'm packed ready for the trip back up to Shropshire tomorrow; doubtless I shall find that I have forgotten something, but that's always the case, isn't it?

I've remembered to put the borrowed laptop with my bag, and I've just copied all my NWO files to the memory stick so I can get on with stuff while I'm away. Anything I've forgotten on that front I should be able to download on my sister's PC. If the borrowed laptop doesn't play ball, I shall borrow my nephew's; or resort to the PC. I think I'm more covered away than I am at home, for once.

I still have a nagging feeling that I've forgotten something, but Lord knows what it can be (it wouldn't be forgotten if I knew what it was, would it?).

Moving on...

Having watched West Wing earlier tonight, I vegged in front of the telly for most of the rest of the time other than the chores already listed. Is it my imagination, or are most of the comedians on TV these days just a bunch of self-satisfied smug bastards who get cheap laughs from an undiscerning public by taking not very clever potshots at easy targets? They then mug at the camera waiting for rapturous applause as if they'd just combined Wildean wit with Sartrean insight. And they tend to get it, too, from the champagne Islingtonites that make up the smug little audience.

Or maybe it's just the BBC. Maybe other channels aren't in a comfort zone populated with a combination of has-beens, never-weres, and hopefully never-will-bes. Somehow I doubt it. Thinking twenty years ahead, I find it hard to think that I shall get nostalgic about this lot like I can about the likes of Ben Elton and Alexi Sayle when they were young and hungry in the early 80s.

There is something quietly frightening about the pap we are spoon fed, and how dangerous witticisms somehow manage to bend with and encompass political correctness, where the only legitimate targets for scathing remarks, though not genuine irony, satire or even true anger, are the Americans. If I felt the cheap jibes arose from anything other than self-satisfied Euro-elitism I'd be more predisposed to go along with them, but they are no deeper than that.

The humour of smug self congratulation laced with super power envy and an elitism borne of ignorance just isn't funny. And it panders to the chattering classes who ought to know better, while building an unconscious concensus in the average prole who absorbs it drip by drip. UK media seems very unhealthy suddenly.

Either that or I've drunk too much coffee, smoked too many ciggies and absorbed too much glucose.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.

A pox on all of their houses

Well, I think I'm packed ready for the trip back up to Shropshire tomorrow; doubtless I shall find that I have forgotten something, but that's always the case, isn't it?

I've remembered to put the borrowed laptop with my bag, and I've just copied all my NWO files to the memory stick so I can get on with stuff while I'm away. Anything I've forgotten on that front I should be able to download on my sister's PC. If the borrowed laptop doesn't play ball, I shall borrow my nephew's; or resort to the PC. I think I'm more covered away than I am at home, for once.

I still have a nagging feeling that I've forgotten something, but Lord knows what it can be (it wouldn't be forgotten if I knew what it was, would it?).

Moving on...

Having watched West Wing earlier tonight, I vegged in front of the telly for most of the rest of the time other than the chores already listed. Is it my imagination, or are most of the comedians on TV these days just a bunch of self-satisfied smug bastards who get cheap laughs from an undiscerning public by taking not very clever potshots at easy targets? They then mug at the camera waiting for rapturous applause as if they'd just combined Wildean wit with Sartrean insight. And they tend to get it, too, from the champagne Islingtonites that make up the smug little audience.

Or maybe it's just the BBC. Maybe other channels aren't in a comfort zone populated with a combination of has-beens, never-weres, and hopefully never-will-bes. Somehow I doubt it. Thinking twenty years ahead, I find it hard to think that I shall get nostalgic about this lot like I can about the likes of Ben Elton and Alexi Sayle when they were young and hungry in the early 80s.

There is something quietly frightening about the pap we are spoon fed, and how dangerous witticisms somehow manage to bend with and encompass political correctness, where the only legitimate targets for scathing remarks, though not genuine irony, satire or even true anger, are the Americans. If I felt the cheap jibes arose from anything other than self-satisfied Euro-elitism I'd be more predisposed to go along with them, but they are no deeper than that.

The humour of smug self congratulation laced with super power envy and an elitism borne of ignorance just isn't funny. And it panders to the chattering classes who ought to know better, while building an unconscious concensus in the average prole who absorbs it drip by drip. UK media seems very unhealthy suddenly.

Either that or I've drunk too much coffee, smoked too many ciggies and absorbed too much glucose.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.