Catching up on stuff:
Thank goodness it's cooled down a bit....
I've posted reviews of Minority Report and Open Secret in Opinion, and I should have at least one comic and two more book reviews up in the next day or so. How good am I?
Returning to the topic of the comics message boards I occasionally check out, I spotted a thread a little earlier of the "What's your favourite [fill in the blank] ever?" school. In this case it was comic cover. Vaguely wondering what sort of stuff would be favoured, I checked it out, only to find that each page was huge because posters were calling in (often quite large) images of the covers they like, and almost all from other people's sites. Now, I've always had a big problem with this kind of thing, so I posted a fairly innocuous comment to the effect that I didn't want to spoil the party, but isn't what you're doing basically bandwidth theft?
The reply I got was very enlightening: "I'm getting them from Mile High Comics and no. It's not". In other words, "yes I'm taking them from someone else's site but no, somehow this isn't theft." Fortunately, someone else stepped in to point out that therefore this is exactly what it is, quoting a copyright notice on the Mile High site in support. Which led to some contrition from the "I'm not stealing" man.
The reason I find this whole exchange enlightening is that it made me realise that there probably is an entire generation of web users who don't think there's anything wrong with pulling in content from another site, mindless of issues of either intellectual ownership or straightforward resource theft. Rather than growing up (in web user terms) accepting the conventions and standards that have been established, they succumb to the simple convenience of what they can achieve. I've actually mailed the owners of the boards to ask whether they think they ought to be educating their users in the rights and wrongs.
And finally for this evening - JakeTM.org - Ivan Massow's latest venture, launched late last year and boasting 7438 members. I think it's suffering a slight identity crisis, as I'm not sure whether it's a social group, a business networking system or a way for Massow to sell more of their financial products, or indeed a combination of the three. I'm sort of intrigued though. I may sign-up and let you know.
I forgot to mention last night's Six Feet Under, which continues to be one of the cleverest, most creative TV dramas I've ever seen. That it's produced in America, where the control and restriction of the network system is notorious, it just shows the difference that the HBO approach makes.
If I have a criticism, it's born purely out of envy and bitterness - how come David gets to bump into a cute potential new lover so easily? Some of us have been single for a year and never once had a cute guy we encounter in our everyday lives so much as say 'hi', never mind offer the prospect of any more....
Great point - love that new lover Kurt asks David if he's top or bottom, and when David replies 'versatile', Kurt says "Bottom then? This'll work out great." Then to wreck the stereotype that Kurt is perpetuating, they're seen in bed later with Kurt saying "Damn, you really are versatile." Let's smash the idea that we all have to conform to one role or another at every possible opportunity.
Unexpectedly, I found myself having a conversation this evening about the situation of people who were adopted and the scary reality of a situation in which one might suddenly find themselves confronted by the fact that their world (their own personal sense of identity) is suddenly completely different than that which they thought it was.
Speaking for myself, I spend a more-than-usual (I suspect) amount of time pondering issues of identity, because of a convoluted personal history I've never shared here but one day will. Questions of what makes us, us, fascinate me. Is it genetics or environment? Is it gender? Is it name? Is it history? Is it future? Is it where we came from, or where we intend (hope) to go?
There's a very significant part of me that insists that I reject nurture because of elements of my own upbringing that I want not to have influenced the kind of person I am. But to the extent that I am a person I want to be; am happy to have become; them I have to accept that I'm part of my own environment, and if I want to be acknowledged as the person I'd like to think I am, I have to admit that I've become it as much because I've influenced myself to be it.
This isn't very coherent, because I wasn't expecting to be addressing it this evening. One of these days I'll get round to putting all this together into a sensible structure.
Four things I've seen today that I just don't get (and one that I get but I'd still be perfectly happy never to see again):
1) Ties that are exactly the same colour as the shirt they're worn with.
2) People who get on the tube with their huge rucksacks still on their backs.
3) Those Samuel L Jackson Barclays ads.
4) People who who have full-on conversations by mobile phone during the film in a cinema .
5) Liza-with-a-Z on Graham Norton.
Been to see Minority Report this evening - review to follow. saw trailers for The Road To Perdition and Eight-Legged Freaks, plus something else that was clearly eminently forgettable.
A few links, as promised:
EasyJet passengers stage sit-in - which makes a change from most EasyJet flights I've been on, when I couldn't wait to get out of the seat and stretch my legs.
Senior Tory MP comes out - well good for him, and it's nice that he's one who has at least not gone down the hypocritical route of voting against gay rights. Cynically, given that he's 45 and his sexuality has apparently been an open secret in Westminster for years, I can't help wondering what specifically has caused him to come out now....
Over on Metafilter, a few people have got their knickers in a twist (pun totally intended) over a 'beauty contest' run by columnist/commentator Dan Savage, Tighty Whities Are Hot. Note for folks on this side of the Atlantic - 'tighty whities'= 'briefs' (as opposed to boxer shorts).
And I noticed this last week but forgot to mention it. Remember I mentioned that all of the cast of The West Wing were up for acting Emmies except Rob Lowe? Well, in what the timing makes look suspiciously like a snit, Lowe is reported to be leaving the show. The official reasons are apparently to do with pay, with the BBC reporting that he didn't get a raise like Martin Sheen and that most of the other main cast members had effectively gone on strike for more pay and got it. They manage to miss the fact that they were going on strike for more pay in order to bring their pay in line with Lowe's. I can understand why he got the bigger salary at the start - he was a 'name', he had lead billing, etc, but by a very early stage, the series was categorically an ensemble, with every member of the team (except the annoyingly whiny, unmissed, Moira Kelly) proving to be an asset of equal value to the success of the whole. In that light, Lowe's position as 'the lead' looked increasingly inappropriate. (Note that I'm not saying he isn't good in the role, just that he's no better than any of the others.)
Great day. Been out to Kent with Chris and Ted for Tim's birthday. Had lunch in Tim's garden, which is really pleasant, then went for a walk in the woods and by the lake near him. If I had a complaint - and it's typically me - it was too fucking hot. Anyway, as a consequence, I haven't been online or done much reading, so no linking at the moment - I'll see what I can come up with tomorrow.
Onwards and upwards(?) to the Big Brother final. Which I'll keep brief(ish).
I was shocked that Jade came fourth - I'd got it in my head that it was going to come down to a Jade/Kate final two. I think she's redeemed herself a lot in the last few weeks, by the way, and her departing performance did her a hell of a lot more credit than a bunch of the others did. I'm amazed that she didn't beat Alex.
Speaking of whom, how much of a non-entity did he turn out to be? He seemed incapable of stringing a sentence together, didn't seem to have gained anything from the experience and was generally a bit pathetic. And surely mine wasn't the only house in which eyebrows were raised over his reaction to the appearance of the friend he was in Hamburg with just before going into the house....?
Jonny was a complete star - from the immediate reaction to the news he'd come second (genuine pleasure for Kate that she'd won) to his interview with Davina and his sheer dumbfounded incredulity that Dustin Hoffman had done an impression of him on Graham Norton the night before, we loved him to bits.
And Kate - I was pleased she won, and I thought her shock and excitement were very natural and human. I'm not sure her winning interview was as strong as it could have been, but I'm not that surprised by that. Love the fact that she was so excited by simply meeting Davina.
Generally, I think the move back to interviewing the winner in the house (like year one) was exactly the right decision. Last year, interviewed in front of the crowd, Brian was constantly being distracted, and it made for a very unimpressive end to the thing. Davina is a truly excellent presenter of the event, she's really good at conveying her own excitement at being there, and puts them all at their ease brilliantly well. Nice to see Tim getting yet more booing - we need more of that. And how nice was Kate's comment to Jonny as he left to make sure he said hello to Alison for her and the huge hug between Kate and Alison right at the end?
Cracking stuff. Lord knows what next year will be like.
I don't know why I let myself get worked up by some of the things that I do. I know I shouldn't; I know it's bad for my blood pressure, temperament and general well-being, but I can't help it sometimes. I was going to post about the Big Brother final last night (and I will in a few minutes), when I was distracted by a particularly unpleasant thread on a comic forum I read. The thread, started off the back of the upcoming addition of a gay character to the X-Men and the apparent 'turning gay' of some others (I never said 'a mature thread') kicked off with a well-reasoned and sensible view that if you're going to have gay X-Men, you might as well have X-Men who like sex with animals or kids in there. It pretty well went downhill from there. You won't want to, but the thread's here for reference.
Anyway, in typical fashion, I brooded, and went back to it and read the new posts, and brooded some more, and eventually decided to forget about it.
Fat chance. After brooding some more, I finally decided I had to post comment, which I've just done. No one will read it. Or if they do, it won't make any difference. The only possible benefit for getting my stuff off my chest is to make myself feel better.
Which I don't by the way.