Robbin' bastards

I was scanning through my credit card today (checking up on the missus and what she’d been frittering) and amongst the lipsticks, bras and shampoos (how much could I have saved if I’d have swallowed my pride and chosen one of the many flat chested bald women that have been attracted to me during my life) when I came across a payment that I didn’t recognise. £20 going to somebody called ‘Redsave’. Anyway, as I dug deeper I realised that I’d been paying them £20 on the same day for the past 6 months. As I didn’t remember signing up to one of Putin’s social programs, I rang the number. Now the girl was very pleasant and as I explained my query she listened and grunted in all the right places and waited for me to finish asking what I had bought.
‘Well Mr Tilley, you haven’t actually bought anything, other than that indoor remote control helicopter back in December.’
‘Oh, so it’s a mistake then?’
‘Oh no, no mistake. The twenty quid is you membership fee.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Yes, when you buy something from us, we sign you up as a member and unless you cancel it then we take the fee every month.’
‘Oh really, but as I haven’t bought anything and it’s obviously been an oversight, you can give me at least some of it back then?’
‘’Fraid not. That would be illegal because it’s part of ….’
I stopped listening. I hate it when people say that something is illegal, especially when it isn’t but I’ve also had enough of these conversations to understand that the helicopter was going to cost £140. Bottom line, and giving Redsave the benefit of the doubt on this one, there are traps out there that innocent online shoppers can fall into. The missus will just have to stop washing her hair for a bit ‘til we get back on our feet.

Why the rush to destroy the planet?

Anyone know when that big particle accelerator in Geneva is striking up? I think its due any time now and normally I’d look forward to it (just love all that mind blowing stuff that the geeks come up with from time to time) but on this occasion, hmmmm. See, normally I trust the scientists implicitly, almost blindly. If they say that embryo research is a good thing, then that’s fine. If a bloke in a white coat assures me that genetically modified crops are safe, I’ll be the first to munch his plums. My problem with the CERN project is simply this; there’s a chance that it will destroy the planet. Okay, I know it’s a very small chance (like winning the lottery three times on the bounce) and I accept that the potential to expand man’s understanding of his existence is mouth watering but seriously, do these statements make the potential risk acceptable? Once the button’s pressed there is no going back. If the strangelet appears, then its game over and the scientists, the smug bastard collecting his winnings for the third Saturday in a row, me, you, everything; all gone when the experiment "spits out something that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called 'strange matter." But surely, with even the smallest chance of bringing on armageddon the boffins will be taking precautions won’t they? Apparently not; schedule issues caused them to delete the low energy ‘test’ run from the program. “We’ll be starting up in May 2008, as always foreseen, and will commission the machine to full energy in one go,” said LHC Project Leader Lyn Evans. Well Mr Project leader, just ‘cos you’ve got a girls name doesn’t mean the rest of us are in a hurry to see if you’ll find the God particle or just God.

The Laughing Policeman; with him or at him?

When you’re writing contemporary fiction it’s important to keep things…well, contemporary. Now at first glance this statement doesn’t seem like rocket science (or should that be shuttle science?) but keeping your book fresh ain’t as straight forward as you might think. Things change fast these days; slang, attitudes, society in general I guess and if you’re not careful it’s easy to work up a piece that you think is current and relevant only for it to become passé and clichéd before it hits the editors desk. Take one aspect of UK culture as an example: the good ol’ British bobby. Don’t get me wrong, I think the coppers do a cracking job but I was under the impression (I guess from the days when I was hanging on street corners) that their attitude, towards youth in particular, was still authoritative and one which demands respect. Apparently it isn’t. I was watching the box last night (camera crew following a various policemen going about their business in London) and was amazed at how naff community policing had become. Policemen chatting casually with gangs of under age drinkers on the very same streets they should be keeping safe. Policemen using words like ‘dude’ and ‘chill’ instead of ‘you’re nicked’. Policemen swearing and lighting cigarettes for 15 year old girls. And as the kids realised that these friendly, laughable policemen were more concerned with looking cool than doing their job, you could see the respect drain away. I’m just glad that I didn’t involve the coppers in the story line of Recycling Jimmy….I would have been so wide of the mark.

The original superstar?

Revelling in the after glow of a magnificent ManU victory last night, I was flicking through the channels looking for something to wind down to. Came a across a program looking at celebrity religion (kabbalah, scientology, P Diddy with $7MM diamond encrusted crucifixes etc) and yes, I know most of this is history now, but it did make me think about what is really going on here. Okay, I am not a religious person but I do try and respect other people’s views. So what is it about a celebrity that makes them think they can hijack someone’s religion in the name of cool? More to the point, what gives them the right to stamp their personal brand all over it? Okay, Kabbalah might be represented by only a piece of red string (that retails at about $26 a length by the way) but why does Madonna feel it necessary to build a Kabbalah hotel? And as for Kanye West (or is it Jesus Christ, I can never remember; they’re so similar aren’t they?) the less said the better. There are more examples but I won’t go on, suffice to say that these people are truly missing the point. I mean, if we look at JC for example, he was surely one of the biggest celeb’s of his day, and in a very competitive market too. Imagine if T shirt’s had been around then? He’d have cleaned up. Don’t the modern day celeb’s realise that daubing themselves with 2000 year old icons isn’t cool, it’s both naff and disrespectful to those who truly understand what their religion is about.

Egg on your face Mr Tesco

I see Tesco’s have been named and shamed (winners of the ‘Bad Egg Award’ apparently) for not removing battery hen eggs from their shelves. In accepting the award they reminded the Compassion In World Farming group that ‘Tesco’s always listen to customers and many of them tell us they are on a tight budget and rely on us to provide affordable good quality food.’ Excuse me but what the hell has that statement got to do with cramming chickens into ridiculously small cages and squeezing eggs out of them? Do Tesco’s honestly believe that anything is acceptable in the name of consumer choice? Anyway, thought I’d nip down to the local store and check out the price difference (needed some milk anyway) and bugger me, it’s big. You get about 150% more bang for your buck. Still, not sure that even poor people agree that you can’t make an omelet without imprisoning chickens ‘til they die. Personally, I reckon that Tesco’s should take another look at this and do their bit to shut the battery farm industry down, not just because its bad but because if nothing else their failure to do so highlights an arrogant disregard for public opinion as well as (and perhaps more ridiculously) a strategic blunder. Has nobody told the CEO that UK battery farms are going to be shut down by 2012??

Snakes on a plane

Imagine you’re cabin crew and a bloke refuses to take his seat for take off. You have no choice but to throw him off the plane in the name of passenger safety right? Now, imagine you’re orthadox Jew and it just so happens that your god demands that you stand near the toilet and pray to him at exactly the same time as the plane you’re on has to taxi. Your god’s a higher authority than the airline yeah? His word holds more weight than the young kid demonstrating how to put a life jacket on and pointing to the emergency exits doesn’t it? Stand off. But this isn’t about the god vs United Airlines, this is about two people who are both suffering from severe OCD. Each is compelled to obey the rules that they’ve been indoctrinate with. The Jewish bloke should have had enough common sense to realise his god would probably understand that, as part of society, he may have to cut his prayers short every now and then, for example whilst he sat down and buckled up. Similarly, it isn’t beyond reason for the cabin crew to appreciate that the bloke will be done praying long before they reach the start of the runway and that he isn’t going to die because he’s stood up while the plane trundles around at 25 mile an hour. Personally, I think the pair of ‘em should have been thrown off the plane; preferably at 30,000 feet (with the life jacket on ofcourse).

Recycling Jimmy

Please, no more romcom!!

So, yet another romcom hits the big screen. Something about 27 dresses this time but I guarantee you it will be the same old crap with too many flaws to mention…but I’ll have a go. There’ll be the lonely, vulnerable girl; beautiful, intelligent, fully cashed up with daddy’s fortune. In other words, a bloke’s dream catch. So why the hell hasn’t she got a boyfriend already? It’s not as if she’s chosen to be single or is particularly career driven. She’ll work in a cafe or a video store and spend all day moaning about how ‘there’ll never be anyone for me’. The whole thing would be so much more believable (dare I say romantic?) if the lead lady was ugly, genuinely stupid and had actually tried to get a boyfriend before. Enter the bloke. He’s easy to spot. Good looking (but not dashing) innocently naïve, skint and on a run of bad luck that would make the bloke carrying the Olympic torch through Tibet feel wanted. He’ll cry a lot too (not the torch carrier…although we’ll see about that), usually about something she reminds him of. It’s a complete mismatch for Christ sake! And the story will never gain credibility because the plot will be transparent, the dialogue mush and the humor infantile. When are film makers going to realise that we can only watch what we’re given? Forcing us out on first dates to watch sloppy, ill thought out tripe just isn’t fair. Give us a choice once in a while. You could do a lot worse than to develop screenplays from edgy, original stuff like Recycling Jimmy, The Game or Truth or Bare. There is no excuse; the materials all out there.