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Tony
Senior Support Technician,
Britain
Every time I input a new applicant into the database I’m working on I have to designate them as a “candidate”, which always causes my brain to start playing David Bowie’s very fine 1974 song Candidate, the repeated refrain of which is “if you want it, boys, get it here, thing” – so you can imagine how difficult it is for me to concentrate on my work.
“Gunmen who seized a Greek bus with 26 people on board have explosives and want to fly to Russia, one of the hostages has told Greek television.”
I’m not an expert, but shouldn’t they have hijacked a plane…?
I notice that there are fresh claims that Blunkett fast-tracked a visa for his ex-lover’s nanny.
The Home Office say these claims are ridiculous, but in these difficult times I wonder if it would be as well to lock Mr Blunkett up without trial for the next two years just in case?
(… from last night’s recording) was my unscripted grunt to signify how annoyed Joseph was with the guy who’d stuck us in his garage. There was something wonderfully satisfying about stepping back from the microphone and getting a cheery thumbs up from James.
Being a soldier was fun, though. I might have to write an audio play where I get to do nothing other than hit things and cry out “they’re over there”, and “hit it with a shovel”. Possibly involving killing vampires, so it’s less disturbing than slaughtering children.
It is estimated that, across the UK, up to 1 billion Christmas cards and as much as 83 square km of wrapping paper will end up in rubbish bins over the Christmas period.
In my opinion this is a disgraceful waste of trees which could otherwise be cut down, put in houses and decorated with fairy lights.
…I pointed out the extremely depressing undertones in Wham’s seminal hit Last Christmas.
This year I’m wondering if it’s actually more positive than I thought.
“Last Christmas I gave you my heart, the very next day you gave it away” – that’s definitely not happy, but “this year to save me from tears I gave it to someone special…”
I wonder if it could be about Jesus?
On that subject, last night I took part in a nativity/epiphany extravaganza for radio, which featured the Division’s very own James Aylett as Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary, a role which he managed to make his own without even using a tea towel.
Along with all the other men he was also a soldier when it got to the nasty bit where Herod kills all the babies. At one point in the convincingly horrific soundscape James shouted “there’s some more of them getting away over there!” and I suddenly had an image of a row of babies running off down the street.
From then on my own soldier was doubled over with laughter and I shall never find the killing of the innocents horrific again.
Or something. A bit out of date, but via the terrific Marianne Levy, the concept of Real Age. Mine is within a year of my actual age (or what, up until now, I was just calling my ‘age’ – how foolish I was back then). I have absolutely no idea what this means, except that it was a fun way to pass an idle few minutes.
I sometimes wonder, if I stayed at home on Mondays and just frittered the day away, if Tuesdays at work would then actually turn out to be productive. I suspect they actually would – against all common sense. There’s something about the water on Mondays.
You, our dear readers, occupy at least some of our thoughts while writing entries. Perhaps ten percent, on a bad day; as much as ninety on a sun-shining, birds-singing day. Today is not one of those days – dreary, the sky the colour of bald linoleum – but I thought I’d buck the winter trend by thinking about what is important to you.
The answers, gathered scientifically by looking at what people were searching for when they found the site, is that you are interested in the Uncertainty Division, and you are interested in porn. Specifically Harry Potter porn.
In fact, you’re more interested in Harry Potter porn than in us (137 hits to 128), providing that we assume “Harry Potter porn” and “Hermione porn” are all really after the same thing. I certainly hope that no one came here looking for “Hagrid porn”; for a start, they’d have been sorely disappointed, and for a second they’re just sick.
Anyway, I’d just like to let you know that we’ve taken on board your interests. However we can’t act further until we know what sort of porn you want Ms Grainger to perform. We’ll be watching the search referrals carefully – as well as looking out for the most popular person to portray Hermione in this new venture. Currently the front runner is James Lark, but Jeff Goldblum isn’t far behind, with a small but dedicated contingent seemingly interested in a Hermione/The Fly crossover …
Last night I stayed up to watch Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, and decided that it is an extraordinarily odd film.
For a film set in a WW2 Japanese PoW camp it captures the mid-1980s astonishingly well (ever wondered why David Lean didn’t opt for an 80s Japanese soft pop soundtrack to The Bridge on the River Kwai…?) The story meanders along aimlessly like a Ben Brafman-led improvised narrative crossbred with the Gay Samurai revue. The Japanese characters are marginally less plausible than Andrew Ormerod’s AEME character Mr Ocinowa (who was, I should point out, a puppet); David Bowie gives a mannered performance (though it’s not nearly as awful as Phil Stott would have you believe); Tom Conti, on the other hand, is rather good.
But it’s all terribly uninvolving, until quite some way into the film a beautifully still and bravely lengthy single shot of Tom Conti in solitary confinement allows his performance to grip the film without interruption. We then cut to Bowie, also in confinement, leading into a surreal flashback sequence where the word “mannered” ceases to be adequate to describe what Bowie’s doing – though for a 30-something he is disturbingly persuasive as a public schoolboy. And this subplot, involving Bowie’s younger brother, is strangely haunting and powerful.
But it’s all very odd. Worth losing sleep for, I think – but very odd.
Talk To Rex 