Carnivale

Not much posting from me recently - but soon the semester will be over and once again I will have some free time! The new university semester structure means that members of staff don't actually get a break at Christmas because of how soon the second semester begins after the first. It's been a long, tiring slog but it'll soon be over.

I just watched the season finale of Carnivale, which is hands down the best show on TV. It even ranks up to the West Wing during its Aaron Sorkin days, and that's pretty exceptional. I hope to God there's a third season of Carnivale - I don't think I could cope if there wasn't. However, the treatment Firefly received at the hands of the Network Execs makes me dubious as to whether they will give us another season. It seems that television shows that are ahead of the curve in writing, storylines, characters and sheer quality are sacrificed in favour of another reality show.

Anyway, the finale was Awesome. If you haven't caught Carnivale on your TV yet, hop along to your nearest P2P software and check it out. Now that the first season has been released on DVD, I've just ordered it... normally I wait until DVD box-sets have their prices slashed to a more reasonable sum - but there are some shows that are just worth every penny. Firefly was one... Carnivale is another. I'd feel like I was short-changing the whole team by waiting until it was on sale at bargain basement prices.

Zombie Terrorism

It must be a great comfort to know that people are being arrested for teen zombie fiction. I mean, if you write a story about zombies taking over a high school, then Al'Qeada wins. Don't you see???

A Monkey Washing A Cat

I hunted around for a movie file of this, but came up empty handed - so I hunted down the Daily Show episode where I saw it, and extracted it purely for your benefits. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the funniest movie clip ever.

Ken Livingstone

I'm not a huge fan of Ken Livingstone's politics, but I do admire his willingness to stand up and say what he thinks. In an age where principle is conflated with unelectability, he's managed to consistently speak his mind and get away with it.

His remarks in this case are unremarkable - the only remarkable thing about the whole incident is how extreme his remarks appear to be because of the inherent pro-Israeli bias in the mass media. That Ariel Sharon is a war criminal is virtually incontrovertible according to any objective metric.

It's also pretty interesting the way his earlier 'concentration camp' remarks have been taken out of their context. The reporter in question works for a paper with a long history of supporting Fascism (the Evening Standard), and that very paper had been responsible for a long-running vendetta against gays and lesbians, as well as a long-running vendetta against Mr. Livingstone himself. The mayor was assailed outside of a party commemorating the 20th anniversary of Chris Smith becoming Britain's first openly gay MP.

He was questioned repeatedly in a very obstreperous, antagonistic manner. When the journalist justified his behaviour with the old standard 'I was just doing my job', Mr Livingstone likened him to a concentration camp guard who was just in it for the money.

Sure, the comment wasn't the smartest thing to say, and it's unsurprising that it has been blown up into a massive slight against the Jewish community... but still, let's not forget there were two sides to the exchange. Everything I read these days leaves the impression of a poor Jewish journalist who was spontaneously SLANDERED by Livingstone, rather than the more accurate impression of an exasperated insult against the typical tabloid-thuggishness of the reactionary press.