bureauista » entertainment

New Battlestar Galactica

bureauista — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:17:00 +0000

I just typed ‘Gaius Baltar’ into a Google search and my browser crashed. This is clearly some kind of Cylon conspiracy to prevent me looking at pictures of James Callis.

Added to this frustration, I am completely flummoxed by the latest twists in the story (so much so that I can’t even form coherent questions to try and alleviate my confusion) and I have the horrific image of Admiral Adama lying in bed with the egghead President. Yeuch!

This had all better be sorted out by Friday.

New Battlestar Galactica

Bogart and Van Damme – separated at birth?

bureauista — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:24:00 +0000

I mean, just look…

P.S. I can’t wait to see this.

Bogart and Van Damme – separated at birth?

Tagged and collared

bureauista — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:16:00 +0000

I’ve been tagged by the Hank Moody of magical realism, the wondrous, intellectual, sexbeast Don Felipe (is that enough ass kissing for you, my little pretty?) to write six random things about me.

1. I’m a raucous drunk.
2. I used to kill rabbits with myxomatosis on the way home from school, until I misjudged a blow and made one scream (you do not want to hear a rabbit scream).
3. My favourite character in Twin Peaks is Albert Rosenfield, because of this quote:

“You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a nay-sayer and hatchet man in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I’ll gladly take another, because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. I love you, Sheriff Truman.”

4. Princess Diana once scowled at me and then looked away. I was five. (Princess of Hearts, my arse.)
5. I know for certain that God has a sense of humour.

I am tagging Kel D.

Tagged and collared

You put Russell in the ratatouille!?

bureauista — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:48:00 +0000

I’ve been following the whole Ross-Brand fiasco story in the media with some interest, as Brand is a common topic of conversation among my peer group. Only last week a friend and I were watching him on TV and agreed that he was struggling. His entire show was based around dissecting untrue news stories about his sexual exploits, a gambit he has used over and over again on his radio show. There was none of the gentle whimsy he can be so good at. I suppose he really has disappeared up his own backside as fame has consumed him; a shame, as his early shows on Radio 2 (I missed the 6Music ones) were often absolute gems. Instead of talking about himself incessantly, he spent large parts of his show giving advice to listeners on unusual problems. One that sticks in my memory was about a woman whose dog barked incessantly whenever she was driving. Over the course of the show, Brand got her to take the dog out in her car then hold her phone to the dog’s ear so he could calm it down (amazingly, it seemed to work). Each week the problems were entirely different, allowing Brand to free-associate at will, leading to many laugh-out-loud moments. I stopped listening to his podcast with any regularity last year when he dropped that item in favour of talking almost exclusively about himself. In the earlier stages of his career he was merely becoming famous, and his dissections of his own celebrity resonated more, purely because they were an unusual comic device at the time; he really ought to have moved on over a year ago, or done the decent Eminem thing of recognising when you’ve run out of material, and bowed out gracefully to concentrate on his acting.

As for the answer phone messages that lead to his downfall – I’ve heard him leave similar messages many times. What about the non-stop sexism and homophobia (so patiently pointed out to him by Simon Amstell recently) – why has he never been censured for any of that before? I suppose the addition of smug Jonathan Ross and his over-inflated salary was just too much for certain people to bear. I’m a fan of both Brand and Ross to an extent, but I’m glad this has happened. Brand’s material was getting very tired, and hopefully Ross will think twice before trotting out his standard Carry-on comments in future. It was an overreaction in terms of the crime itself, but long overdue when you consider how much these clowns get paid to produce ill-prepared, lazy, predictable, patronising material week after week after week. Let’s hope they both go away and raise their game.

You put Russell in the ratatouille!?

The Crunch

bureauista — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:57:00 +0000

Despite having recently lost my job (technically I resigned, but that was really a case of rat abandoning sinking ship) and been made effectively homeless by the credit crunch, I have more reasons to be cheerful than most of my colleagues in educational publishing.

This morning 15 people were made redundant in the London office of the company I do most of my freelancing for. As the day passes more and more round robin emails with short ‘goodbye, stay in touch’ messages keep dropping into my inbox. They don’t say much but from phonecalls with various folk I gather the atmosphere is awful. Lots of managers meeting behind closed doors, lots of desks being hurriedly cleared.

For me, however, things are looking up. In fact, I’m currently working on three separate projects for three different departments of the same company. Because I don’t take up desk space, because I’m happy to work on short-term contracts with no guarantee of future work, because I don’t require holiday or sick pay, PAYE or benefits, but I’m perfectly plugged in to the company culture and know the products inside out, I’m the perfect choice in a situation like this. I know some of my freelance colleagues are suffering as publishers stop outsourcing but I wonder if this will start to reverse as more and more in-house staff are made redundant. Someone has to take projects forward and freelancers are the cheaper, safer option in this type of climate. (Of course, there’ll be a complete freeze on hourly rates, if not a drop. SfEP minimum rates? Nice idea, but not a chance.)

Image taken from here.

However, the main benefit of having been credit crunched is that I now have a perfectly legitimate excuse to look people in the eye and say grimly: ‘You know nothing of the crunch’.

The Crunch