today : I declare "geef me eten!", and acquire a Polish soul-mate

For reasons that aren't at all sinister but are complicated to explain, I made a new friend this week. Megi is Polish but is actually from The Netherlands. The reason we became friends is that we both have Catch 22 pretty much at the top of our favourite books list (just as an aside I have noticed a move amongst young people to converge the words best and favourite in recent years. If I was a language maven it would annoy me...okay, it does annoy me...but because it makes one of these useful words that I find valuable redundant. But with a chin-stroking David Crystal-like detached interest I find this interesting. That kids will refer to something as my best football team or my best pop group or my best trainers says something about the idea of quality in the current cultural climate. Is this some kind of sign that notions of good and bad and best and worst as relative concepts has finally taken hold, not just amongst academics and cultural commentators but among everyone. Is it something to do with the 'MYwhatever' idea? The notion that what YOU choose and consume is the most important thing in the world, regardless of any previously agreed objective notions of quality).

Anyway, the odd thing is that Megi and I both agree on our favourite scene from our favourite book. In amongst all the wonderful detail, the unbearable death of Snowden, the comic death of Kid Sampson, the old Italian guy in the brothel, the chocloate covered cotton or Clevinger disappearing into a cloud, our favourite scene (also Robert X Cringley's, it seems) is when Major ________ DeCoverley breaks the loyalty oath frenzy by demanding "Gimme Eat!"

How cool is that?* That a Polish girl who's actually from in Holland who reads Catch 22 in what is, effectively, her third language (or if we treat English English and American English as different languages rather than variations on a single language - her FOURTH language), has a favourite scene in an 800 page novel that is same as mine. This was discovered by accident too. It wasn't one of those things where people just agree with each other to be more appealing.

This, basically supports my theory that people are simply not unique, and that the more we find out about genetics, the less unique we will become. In fact, I kind of think that geneticists might put the final kaibosh on the myth that as individuals we are unique and special once and for all, which in turn will have rather serious implications for Myspace, My Favourites, My Media Library and 'My best trainers'. I reccommend that someone copyright OurSpace as a brand name immediately for long term gain.

*there is also the issue, which we discussed, about how Europeans are frequently better at speaking and understanding English than the English. The English (Trevor Brooking, par example) are rubbish at other peoples' languages.

today's unsung cultural icon is...

Penfold
(as voiced by the peerless Terry Scott)

today's iconic and old-fashioned looking food product is...

They're cheap and yummy!

today : I enter the murky world of international espionage

The last days and death of Alexander Litvinenko have been sad. Anyone dying is, really. But the media furore has been typical of lots of stories recently that have displayed similarities.

Earlier this week the assassination of Pierre Gemayel was reported as 'prominent critic of Syria assassinated'. The implication placed inside the headline being that it was the Syrians wot did it. That might well be the case, but I doubt the journalists and newsreader reporting this could provide evidence and sources to back up this assumption.

Similarly, Mr Litvinenko's condition was described as a definite case of poisoning by Thalium. I am reading between the lines here and thinking that Thalium poisoning is a traditional KGB way of offing people, and that someone, somewhere has either planted the story or made assumptions that almost immediately became the truth. It now turns out that it wasn't Thalium, but something else. And actually don't we have a coroner to decide the cause of death in this country? A connection was instantly made to the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. In fact, it appears most of the information surrounding this case was provided by Litvinenko's friends, and eagerly gobbled up by the media, who palpably became excited to be reporting on what feels like a real life episode of Spooks or 24. The media became desperate to run with the story. Spies and shady assassinations are so glamorous ( and for some reason the Sushi bar connections adds something to this glamour. I am guessing it is a Sushi bar know well by journalists, making them feel closer to the story). All the while acting surprised that an ex-KGB officer has ended up dead. I always thought that possible death was something you signed up to when you joined a spy service.

But as yet there is no evidence that Litvinenko was killed by the FSB, neither is there hard evidence that Putin's cronies offed Anna Politkovskaya.

I am not saying that neither might not turn out to be true. But nobody questions the motives of figures such as Boris Berezovsky, another Russian exile, or former Chechen commander Akhmed Zakayev - who all seem reasonably high profile and plugged into the network of media that are reporting the story. Who is investigating their agenda? We know from watching TV and films that not everybody is as they seem. Murk can obfuscate both ways (and almost invariably does). I'm not saying these people are operating on a shady agenda, only wondering if this question has been asked.

24 hour news has created an instant tabloid approach to news reporting. Misbah Rana was kidnapped by her father to be forced into marriage until proved otherwise, MMR causes autism until proved otherwise, Litvinenko was killed by the FSB using Thalium until proved otherwise (Gregory House, of course, would have found out what it really was). In the old days such things were pursued by the Insight team or on TV the World in Action or Panorama team. These days Newsnight might task someone to unpick the murky threads of such a story and separate the real truths from the myths, assumptions, insider briefings and gossip. Weeks, months or sometimes years went by whilst committed and professional journalists found the meat and potatoes of a story and then wrote about it. 24 hour news is Turkey Twizzlers and instant mash by comparison.

today : I've been expecting you...

Okay, It seems that there is a new James Bond film out. I know this for two reasons. Firstly I read a review. Secondly, every media outlet had been swamped with Bond TV shows, Bond articles, Bond documentaries, Bond countdown lists and even Bond news items (yes, that's news. even the BBC these days has a showbiz story on their main news bulletins. The world really has gone to hell in a handcart).

It happens often. Especially on TV. I am okay with those 'on the set with' promo shows, interviews at the premiere and a little kerfuffle (even using the Bond theme as an excuse to post a photo of the devastating Eva Green on your blog, see above). What annoys me is that TV schedulers seem to think that because a Bond film (or The Davinci Code or some other film) appears in the cinema, we are all desperate to watch a 2 hour documentary on Bond theme songs, keen to watch Thunderball for the nine-hundredth time, itching to observe discussions of Dalton vs Connery vs Moore vs Brosnan and generally be so utterly swamped with Bond themed programming that having a tea party with some visitors from the KGB seems like a pleasant option.

today : I know what time it is

Whoever it is who decides these things has decided to replace the voice of the speaking clock. They ran an open competition and people volunteered and auditioned for this unpaid but rather quaint and unique position in Britain's cultural life and history.

I can't say I've followed the competition colsely, but if you watch the TV and listen to the radio you can't quite avoid it. And, of course the woman who won has a plummy middle class received pronounciation kind of voice. It's okay, but the in-charge people have totally missed a trick by playing it ultra-safe.

Here was an opportunity to make a statement. My own thought was that they should have had lots of speaking clock people. Out of 18,000 people who volunteered, surely there must have ben 12, or 52 or 365 who could have done the job perfectly well? The fact remains that this chosen 'voice of authority' is a conservative choice.

Britons have a range of spectacular and fascinating accents amongst them. Replacing the speaking clock was an opportunity to reflect the country as a whole. I suggest that 52, or 365 different people with a range of accents, rotating over the days and weeks, would have been a more interesting, radical and reflective choice.

Today : I am still waiting for lift-off

Kooky

Oh dear, I am still waiting for studio 60 to start happening and yet again I was disappointed. Nothing happened. Last weeks episode was a rerun of the West Wing story about the guy who wrote to Roosevelt in 1937. This weeks was basically a re-run of those intermittent (and mainly interminable two-part) fish-out-of-water episodes of the West Wing, specifically the ones where Josh, Toby and Donna get stuck in the country and get all annoyed about how goddam slow everything is and their Blackberrys (or is it Blackberries?) won't gte a signal. Or the one where Josh and Toby go to bail out the judge on his antiquing trip and, shock horror, argue about missing an exit, playiong out the roles of husband and wife in the car. Or any one of the ones where people sit on planes and chat a lot.

Studio 60 added to these well worn themes : long periods of silence where people said nothing, slo-o-o-o-w panning shots that I guess were designed to show us the slo-o-o-o-wness of life in the country and John Goodman reprising his more intelligent than he appears speaker of the house persona. Annoying slo-ow RyCoodery slide guitar denoting the slow-ow RyCooderiness of the country. Characters flitted in and out of short scenes that added up to nothing in particular and just when a scene featuring nutso Jordan and her attractive kookiness sparked my interest, we were moved on to another shot of someone not talking, not being kooky, or not being anything really. And I can't remember a single memorable line, even the unmemorably memorable ones.

Perhaps the problem is me. Perhaps another story about - fercrissakes! - blasphemy or the press jumping on those neatly polarised American views about gay marriage say nothing to me about my-y life - living as I do in a country where the most mainstream of our entertainment has blasphemy, swearing, sexual innuendo and also just plain sex aplenty, as well as our real life having gay marriage. Aaron Sorkin should come over here and do his writing. He'd have no problems crticising the government, writing explicit pan-sexual love-scenes and making his characters swear and cuss as much as he likes. In fact on British TV, thankfully, all the above are more or less compulsory.

Yet again I go back to the fact that making a comedy is a world away from running the, well, the world. What is Studio 60 saying apart from the fact that the glamorous and highly paid world of TV is such damned hard, stressful and demanding work? It's all those audiences and advertisers and legal folk. They are just so annoying. Whine!

Because as we know, it is this stress and daily grind that inspires rich young entertainment executives, writers and perfomers to shovel industrial amounts of cocaine up their noses, and not the fact that they have more money than brain cells and can't find anything else to do for fun than follow the crowd.

today : wiley & windy

today : eleanor/the girl was never there

today : /England, not New England/shining path/blue sheeps/waspish

today : I experience post-midterm schadenfreude

Let's all laugh at Katherine
Let's all laugh at Katherine
Ha ha ha ha (oo!)
Ha ha ha ha !

today : I remember a forgotten man

This news has kind of slipped by unnoticed. In fact, when the story started to emerge a few days ago it said a lot that the journalists reporting it didn't attach the rider to it - that the conviction of Stefan Kiszko for the murder of Lesley Molseed was a shameful example of the system framing someone based on stereotypes. Perhaps they didn't even remember. Stefan Kiszko was disabled, suffering from XYY syndrome, a condition that can lead to developmental difficulties. Basically the prosecuting authorities found a man-child type - an unsocialised, problematic individual who seemed like he might be the kind to commit such a crime. And then they fitted him up.
I remember the day Kiszko got out. He was interviewed on TV saying that he would like to resume a normal life and perhaps get married. Prison had led him to suffer mental health issues and he never receieved an apology from the police or the autorities. He died aged 41, 18 months after his release. The official report on how the miscarriage occurred was never published.

Because this story was local to me and was perhaps covered more extensively than throughout the rest of the country the pathetic image of Kiszko and his mother upon his release has stayed with me. I thought about him when I myself was maliciously accused of a crime earlier this year. Luckily, despite the best efforts of the police, they couldn't build a case against me because there was no evidence (I must add the crime I was accused of was totally minor compared to Kiszko's). However, I still thought of him whilst a copper was telling lies to my face about evidence he said he had and treating me like a piece of crap.

I hope that this time the real killer of Lesley Molseed has been found and will be brought to justice. I can't imagine the police would arrest and charge someone without a pretty cast iron case already in place. I also hope that the authorities remember how, collectively, they destroyed the life of an innocent man in order to be seen to get a result.

this weeks scary and unhinged person AND crackers pop person is...

Genesis P. Orridge

today : I look into my crystal ball

I have revised my opinion of what will happen in the midterms tomorrow. Fact is, we need to learn from history. And history dictates that recently The Republicans (especially Bush & Rove pictured above) have a strange habit of winning elections that they just don't look like winning. I am suspicious. Perhaps they won't get the kicking that they deserve.

today: I look forward to the GOP getting a spanking

I am really looking forward to the Republican party being spanked in the mid-terms. I imagine that the feeling for anti-Bush Americans is similar to the feeling we in Britain had in 1997 when we knew the Tories were going to get blitzed in the General Election.

However, I've been reading and hearing lots of chatter about Hilary and Barak over the past few weeks. I do hope that the Democrats and their supporters do not see that Congressional elections on the back of a war and a pervy scandal as some kind of victory. The fact is that any party in charge when stuff like this is happening is going to get spanked in the next election that comes along. Public reaction will get the voters out because there is something to be angry about. Remember : people vote against rather than for.

My worry is that the Democrat party, who seem to be ineffably stupid when it comes to making sensible electoral decisions, will do exactly what they did in 2000 - begin to believe that the Prez election in 2 years is already won. I don't doubt that there will be a time for a female prez and a black prez, but if they nominate either Hilary or Barak (or a 'dream ticket' containing them both) they will lose because HIlary's history and gender and Barak Obama's race and inexperience will give some people reasons to vote against them. In some ways it's a shame but what the Dems need to do is to choose the the least offensive, most 'acceptable' candidate. This, if they read their history is the other one of the only two ways to defeat a rabidly ideology driven government. The other is, of course to put them up against a wall and shoot the bastards! However, CNN would have trouble reporting that one.

Today : I accuse Tony Blair of being a bloody idiot.

Dear Tony,

Along with any loads of your colleagues, much of the press and plenty of the 'intelligentsia' you have joined the call for a debate about religion and culture and such prescient points of discussion as 'should Muslim women be banned from wearing veils and headscarves.?'

You bloody idiot. There is no debate. The debate is over. We are supposed to be a country that enjoys the kind of freedoms that you are so keen on helping the US promote abroad. You are also, as a leader, supposed to be able to weigh up the issues and see some sense.

The result of the debate, as you obviously missed it, was : Muslim women can wear what the hell they like. They can pray to whomever they like, they can talk to whomever they like and they are also perfectly capable of doing whichever job they choose, whatever they are wearing.

Just for the record, Christians, Pagans, Atheists and everyone else are also free to do all of these things. France was just wrong to ban headscarves and veils in schools. Why are you allowing legitimacy to the racist xenophobes who are using every opportunity to attack Muslims? Why have you not sacked the 'race relations' minister who declared that a teacher wearing a veil denies students their education? Where have your balls gone?

Yours in annoyance

S. Dog esq.

this weeks crackers pop personality is...

Howard Jones's friend - the completely pointless mime artist. Or as the Germans say, more appositely Pantomime Tanzer.

today : I admit to my secret addiction

My name is Saltydog, and I am an addict.

I have kept this addiction secret for several years. It's okay, I can handle it. It hasn't got any worse over time. But the moment has come to admit my addiction and begin to embrace it. The fact is, I am a fan of reality TV.

RTV is much maligned. The 'critics' still treat it all as not as serious as 'serious' TV - the traditional stuff that critics like, like unfunny comedies, stuffy, long winded documentaries with high brow topics and 'hard-hitting' drama. RTV is lumped in with soaps, game shows, comedies with jokes rather than ironic commentaries on the nature of humour and it's relationship to the social fabric of an increasingly fragmented society, and melodrama as fodder for the uneducated, non-Media Studies degree qualified masses.

But lots of RTV is fun and entertaining, and in the best cases touching and intelligent. What I am addicted to is the simplicity of the narratives. Person wants to be a singer - person achieves their impossible dream, person with two left feet becomes, against all the odds, an accomplished dancer, naughty child turns into good child. Done well these shows can be quite compelling.

My favourites are the redemption shows. Once I watch one, I often find myself rooting for the characters and wanting, sometimes, desperately, them to to succeed. Recently I have watched Bad Lads Army, That'll Teach em, Evacuation, Ballet-hoo, Beauty and The Geek, and several others. The Saturday Night Reality season is upon us. X factor goes head to head with Strictly Come Dancing. SCD wins, and it wins because they realise that the story is the thing. Each Saturday show is accompanied by a daily dose - a half hour show that follows the couples behind the scenes and explores all the facets of their training, tantrums and triumphs. By the end of the run, you feel that you kind of know these remote celebrities. And d'you know what? The ones that do well are just normal people who work hard.

The best reality shoe for me is Brat Camp. Unruly and out of control teenagers are taken to a camp in the middle of Utah and retrained by hard work, self reliance and asceticism. It's kind of like Transcendentalist training for the terminally delinquent. As a school teacher I recognise the delinquents. They are just like the ones I deal with everyday. And the show captures the experience that teachers have. Over the course of just a few episodes you begin to see that underneath the horrid brattish exteriors are scared children. In the classroom you know you have cracked it with a certain student when you can get a joke, a smile or a secret out of them. Pace Herman, the damaged boy whom after making my life hell for several months with his disruptive and abusive antics, came and asked me advice about how to stop his brother from bullying him and stealing his stuff. I couldn't help really, but the ice was broken. I told him to ask for a lock on his room door - and he was grateful for this simple advice that anyone could have given. It gave him a little control over his life. Or Lottie, the aggressive, mouthy handful of a girl who was gradually destroying everyones' patience and in three years slipped from the top end of achievement to the very bottom. During one particularly nasty shouting fit (she shouting at me, for what I forget) I told her she was pretty when she smiled. That appears to be all that was needed, someone to say something nice about her. As with Grace, she was suffering from step-child syndrome - her father was gone and the new dad had his own daughter to dote over. Lottie just needed some positive attention from an adult - any adult. After that things went on the up for me and Lottie. Within a few weeks she was shushing the class for me and even finishing the odd piece of writing. I saw Lottie the other day, walking down the street scowling. It made me laugh as I drove past

Brat Camp manages to show this journey. We see hardened aggressive teenagers melt a little and grow younger (like Jennie Greavie from series 2 pictured above). It's always a front, a crust grown over pain and low self esteem. The latest series widens the story. Parents accompany their unruly brats and. even though I've only seen episode 1, it is pretty clear that the parents are possibly even more problematic than the kids.

The reality shows that I can't handle are the ones that set out to humiliate or to behave like a freakshow. Big Brother, for example, grows ever more prurient and charmless. It also has no story. The characters don't develop. Essentially they are characters in search of an author. They are basically made to do nothing apart from the occasional task designed to strip away their dignity. They say that drama is real life with the boring bits cut out, Big Brother is like real life with the interesting bits cut out.

Like taking bad drugs.

today's scary and totally unhinged person is...

Screamin' Jay Hawkins

today : I watch the new Cracker

Be warned. This little sliver of writing contains possible spoilers, especially if you are American (or living therein).

It was nice to see Robbie Coltrane back on TV as Cracker. And even though the latest one-off story wasn't nearly as dire as the Hong Kong one-off from 1997, neither was it close to the quality of the originals.

Whilst everything was in place - Coltrane, MsGovern and Antonia Bird reunited, a killer with plausible motives, a political edge. Fitz at the gaming table and arguing with his (now married with children) son, embarrasing himself whilst too well oiled and putting the pieces together satisfactorily, it had a hole in the middle.

The original Cracker was driven by the energy of tension between Fitz's chaotic personal life, beset by demons and difficulties and the disturbed. violent nature of the crimes. And both the glue that tied these two elements together and the conduit that facilitated a plausible free-flow between them was Panhandle. In the early episodes Cracker not only cracked The Train Killer, Sean and Tina, Albie et al but, crucially, Penhaligan herself. Their close workiong relationship and subsequent affaire was the hidden dynamo behind the plot and character dynamics throughout the original shows. It fed the tensions of the squad room, where Panhandle was jealously regarded by the other detectives (notably Jimmy) and Fitz caused out-and-out resentment through his intimacy with her. And it contributed to the familial crises that engulfed Fitz. He had two reasons to escape into work and the main one was Panhandle. He also could use his relationship with her to avoid dealing with his problems with Judith.

Waching the originals again , it is striking that Geraldine Somerville's perfomance is subtle and terrific. She and Coltrane pinged dialogue off each other and her tough/vulnerable persona was superbly portrayed. The latest film was accompanied by a DVD style extra - The Making of Cracker. Interviews, a potted history of the show, Coltrane, Ecclestone, McGovern, Lorcan Cranitch. But no Somerville. It was like somehow she was excised from the exercise. Even during the interviews she was barely mentioned. It was odd - like Take That without Robbie.

Even with Somerville's absence, if the latest episode somehow becomes a series the producers would do well to remember that Fitz needs a Panhandle-style character, as well as other adversaries like Jimmy to really make him fire. The detectives in the 2006 version were unmemorable cyphers. In fact. the whole show would have been better done over maybe three hours to give the setting and context space to breathe and develop.