Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Shrek to star in remake of 'Kiss of the Spiderwoman'

After the shock announcement that Spongebob Squarepants is 'involved' with Patrick Starfish and that Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street are as gay as all get-out, the religious right in the States has come up with yet another wholly pointless attack on a cartoon character with the claim that Shrek 2 promotes transgender acceptance.

Leaving aside my own apparently lunatic belief that promoting tolerance and acceptance is a good thing, I'm left unsure whether to laugh or to bellow in outrage at this latest Christian nuttiness. Fair enough, for anyone with an IQ higher than his waist size this is just funny, but it seems that there are a lot of stupid people in the States (hence the re-election of Bush Jr) and they do have quite a say in how the world is run. Constant bombardment with the hate-laden message of the Christian Right can only push what is already a dangerously high-handed populace into opposing yet more civil liberties and attacking yet more people often less than able to defend themselves.

Whilst a film with a blatantly neo-conservative agenda like The Incredibles continues to be praised to the heavens, and the (very) slightly subversive Shrek 2 gains this kind of mad publicity, I can't help thinking that just laughing it off isn't a wise thing to do.
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Monday, February 14, 2005

Finished Reading III

The Real Mackay - Dave Mackay

Better than average footballer's biography from the man described by Eusebio as the best all round player in the world.

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Finished Reading II

Myth Makers #14 - Richard Salter and Scott Clarke (eds)

A bit of a long review, so click here to read it on another site.

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Thursday, February 10, 2005

Blogs are not islands

Well that's a bit strange.

I was thinking on the way home last night how nice it was that you could publish a blog, make all of your innermost thoughts theoretically available to anyone who cared to read them, and then by the simple expedient of sending no-one the link, have the entire thing exist invisibly in public view. The fact that it's written as though there were an audience does, I think, make an invisible blog even more pleasant to write (as an example, the list of lyrics on a t-shirt below contains one lyric from a band I was in so no-one will possibly know it, but that doesn't matter since no-one was ever likely to read it).

Anyhow, having decided that I rather liked the fact my blog was invisible, I came into work today and thought I would indulge myself by writing a fairly pretentious thought I had in the car this morning on my blog - only to find that the little counter thingy claimed that I'd had a dozen different people reading the bloody thing over the past day or two!

Which, of course, makes the entire exercise somewhat different, and means that - as just one example - my pretentious theory regarding the links between Tracy Chapman's song 'Fast Car' and Gwendoline Brooke's poem, 'We Real Cool' will just have to stay under my hat.

I may as well put a link on my own webpage now, I suppose...

Oh, and hello anyone (unexpectedly) reading this


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Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Finished Reading I

The Carpet People - Terry Pratchett

My first really disappointing Pratchett book, especially when read straight after the stellar Night Watch. If ever you want to see the growth of an author from talented novice to master storyteller, try reading the two books one after the other.

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Friday, February 04, 2005

Wildthyme on Top

Excellent news yesterday when both the Iris Wildthyme story collection and Iris audios from Big Finish were officially announced in DWM.

For those who don't know, Iris is a time-travelling character created by Paul Magrs for the BBC Doctor Who book range, who has since branched off into original audio drama starring Katy Manning.

Amongst the authors involved are Lance Parkin, Phil Purser-Hallard, and Craig Hinton, three of my favourite genre authors, and Stew Sheargold, whose short story, It's Raining Again is fantastic in every possible sense.

All in all, something to look forward to...

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