Author: James Aylett

The Prime Minister is out hunting women, John Hutton as his wingman. When will politicians learn that ladies out shopping are not vermin, and deserve at least as much legal protection as foxes?

The Independent’s shameful (and somewhat unexpected) bias in favour of British military deaths in Iraq is worth pointing out, but what about all these words people keep on using incorrectly?

For instance, Metro today had a headline something like “Blair met 100th casualty”. Which he may well have done, but that isn’t important. What they meant was “Blair met 100th fatality“. If the two were synonymous then we wouldn’t have both Six Feet Under and ER.

Worse, however, was The Evening Standard saying that Corporal Gordon Alexander Pritchard was a “victim”. What was he a victim of? It pains me to say it, because I grew up amongst a lot of army kids and I have friends who are in the army now, but one of the few things you can guarantee about being in the military is a greater risk of dying. Using words like “victim” is attempting to hide behind the same fantasy that gave us “surgical” bombing, and it’s a dangerous fantasy because it makes us think that the norm is for a whole load of soldiers to run at a whole load of other soldiers, for one side to win (ours, naturally) but for no one to get hurt. Which is more disturbing, that soldiers get hurts and sometimes killed, or that we are being fed propaganda that suggests that they don’t?

Meanwhile I notice that Tony Blair has been defeated by John Wells. Next we’ll hear that Patricia Hewitt is asking George Clooney to be her new policy advisor.

• Borodin’s “Stranger in Paradise Factory“
• …
• Nah, I’m out

I accidentally watched The American President last night, and realised that you can have great fun playing “spot the West Wing bits”.

First, there are the actors (Anna Deavere Smith and Joshua Malina both jumped out at me, and of course Martin Sheen – there’s also Nina Siemaszko, who plays Ellie Bartlet), but then there are the issues (they’re trying to pass gun legislation, as in an early West Wing episode), the minor characters (Senator Stackhouse is referred to, who crops up in an episode of the TV series), the backplot (President Andy Shepherd studied under a Nobel-winning economist), the dialogue (“Someday someone’s going to have to explain to me the virtue of a proportional response”). I could go on.

The difference between the film and the TV series (excepting that the film is a romantic comedy) is that the characters are a little vague in the film, a little loose. Which is entirely understandable – you need more depth to sustain over a hundred hours of television – but is probably also the reason that these days I’d far rather watch some really great TV than camp out in front of a couple of hours of Hollywood, no matter how good the special effects are.

Oh, and the TV series runs about twice as fast. How the hell did Sorkin manage to write so many damn words?

Ronnie, one of the charming people I work with when I’m not pretending to be an actor, just came back from lunch to announce that he’d “given Cilla Black a chip”. It turned out he meant this literally – she was filming in a fish and chip shop he’d gone into and had asked him if she could scab one.

Tragically he didn’t ask her to choose one of the three tasty morsels concealed on the other side of his hand.

Buses confound me – I understand entirely how you get none for ages and then three at once (it was explained on Notes & Queries once), but I can’t for the life of me figure out how you can get none for ages and then just one come along. Where have the other ones gone? Perhaps buses travel at relativistic speeds, meaning that although the time between them is always fifteen minutes from their point of view, more than half an hour elapses for those of us hanging around in the cold for the next one?

Of course if that were the case then you’d expect to get home really, really quickly – at least as far as your house was concerned. But my house agreed completely with me when I finally got back this evening that the time was: far, far too late.

So I reckon someone’s stealing Cambridge’s buses. If found, please return, etc., there’s a good chap.

I thought Howard had just congealed in a corner; I’d completely forgotten him in the rush to crown the new King David.

Mind you, he’s always been utterly useless when it comes to criticising Blair. If only he’d read my previous article, perhaps he could have saved himself some pain and humiliation.

Then again, perhaps not. Maybe he likes it?

Gutting news, if you’ll excuse the weak pun, of a fire at the Aardman warehouse. I remember having it pointed out to me when I went down to Bristol once to work on a boat.

Anyway, fare well, Aardman memorabilia. I’m sure there’s a better place for you.

(If you’re wondering why I haven’t been posting anything recently, and are perhaps miffed that you went to the great lengths of bothering to read this entry only to realise that you’d already seen it on Sky News at lunchtime, well, umm, it’s because I’m busy, all right?)

Every so often, they come up with absolute gems, such as this list of uses for the new size G2. Fab.

The slightly oddly-named Life Begins At 30 blog (everyone knows that after 29 you are 21 again) has a great post about why you should eat locally produced food.

However it’s a disturbing post because of a couple of the comments further down. One person says:

Oh and another thing – I hate to be the one to tell you this, but life actually begins at 0. If you’re a Republican I guess you’d say life begins at -.75, but you wouldn’t say it to me because I’d karate chop you in the neck for voting for a retarded monkey twice in a row.

which is unnecessary, but at least the view of some people. Then someone replies:

jeez, some of you wacky liberals can’t even take a nice, simple post about the pleasures of fresh food without taking a pointless partisan swipe. Pathetic.

which is necessary, and I guess the view of some people. But liberals? I find it amazing, sometimes, that the word ‘liberal’ has become a mark of derision, of disrespect, in modern America. Perhaps I just don’t understand human nature very well. Perhaps I just don’t understand Americans very well.