The wonders of the search engine stats

One of the perks of using WordPress is that you get to see the words and phrases that people put into a search engine that then led them to your blog. As a little extra entry, here are some interesting ones that led to the CDB Desk:

“what does look like a prat mean” ~ I found this one rather charming. The entry concerning Jeremy Clarkson and Britney Spears came up on the first page of Google results.

“profound msn names”, “horrible msn screen names”, “msn screen names that say I like you alot!” ~ having tried all of these phrases it became apparent that there’s apparently a whole load of sites devoted to supplying people’s MSN names for them. For crying out loud – can nobody put something sensible that they thought up themselves? This really stunned me. It detracts from my already-limited faith in the human race. It clearly has something to do with the terrible naming trends I covered in my first entry.

But wait, there’s more! “impressive msn name” was a personal favourite of mine. It’s just somebody asking to be unimpressive.

“what your msn name says about you” ~ I’m guessing that in this particular searcher’s case it’s “I am a prat”.

And that was followed by a whole load of stuff about Hugh Laurie. But that’s far less funny.

TV: America knows best

Truth be told, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of the United States of America. Invasions of Middle-Eastern countries aside, they butchered the English language and maintain a general lack of awareness of the world they (mostly) control. (Incidentally, I don’t wish to stereotype all Americans in this bracket, there are a good deal of very aware and intelligent people over there – that’s the law of averages for you.) I tend to resent somewhat its influence.

However, it’s difficult not to develop a grudging respect for the total superiority of American television over that of the British. I think I would have a very hard time dealing with the (rather wide) shadow of the stars and stripes that encompasses the globe if it were not for the saving graces of (to name but a few) Lost, 24, House, Battlestar Galactica and so on and so on.

There just seems to be something about the American mentality that lends itself to making amazing TV. There may be a link between the fact that Americans tend to be more outgoing and less guarded than the stereotypical Englishman and the far more edgy nature of American TV. People take risks with ideas and hence we see shows like 24, which created an entirely new format for how a TV show could exist – the real-time hour-per-episode length that we take for granted with the show now that it’s had six seasons. I can’t see anyone in Britain having ever made a programme like that.

Of course, after things become great successes in the US, then the British market start making bad copies of it – witness Spooks, which can try all it want but it’s always going to be an inferior 24 without the time gimmick. On the other end of the genre scale, the frankly pathetic Mistresses that recently failed to set BBC One viewers alight is a painfully crap rehash of the superb Desperate Housewives. (Yes, I’m male, I watch Desperate Housewives. You try it, then try and laugh.)

Occasionally, American TV gets so good that it passes its own viewers by. Joss Whedon’s magnificent space western Firefly suffered this fate – it was critically acclaimed, rightly so, as one of the very best television series of recent years, but just couldn’t get the viewers to survive. As I mentioned not long ago, Jericho found itself in a similar situation (though I’m not about to claim that Jericho is anywhere near as awesome as Firefly).

The only thing that Britain has to pride itself upon is Doctor Who, which continues to fly the flag for family entertainment. The fourth season starts up again on Saturday 5th April and despite the thoroughly disappointing return of Catherine Tate as the new companion, it’s going to be a cracker. Torchwood’s second season has done much to make up for the horrendous first effort, but it needs to be this good consistently to earn its place next to its parent show as genuinely great British TV. Life on Mars was the only other really excellent production we’ve had recently, and even that is having its reputation eroded away somewhat by the lacklustre Ashes to Ashes spin-off.

This is a great time of year for the British viewer, but it’s barely anything to do with our own TV. Running alongside Doctor Who (and, frankly, probably outshining it) will be the fourth seasons of Lost, House, Battlestar Galactica and Desperate Housewives. Fantastically, all of the above are on different days of the week, so almost every day there is going to be some compelling telly to watch. And it’s all thanks to our friends across the Atlantic. God Bless America!

Tales from Wookiepedia

Okay, so so much for ’see you tomorrow’, but I’m still here. Truth be told, I found it very difficult to post for a few days because I’ve been ridiculously tired. “Why?”, I hear you ask (or not). Well, that would be because I recently indulged in an all-six-movies overnight Star Wars marathon (there was a chance more recently to catch up with sleep during the England-France game on Wednesday night, but enough about sport. There’ll be a whole other blog for that in the summer).

And you know what? Star Wars is still the incredible awesome saga it ever was. It was nice to go back and watch the prequel trilogy again, something I haven’t done for a while, and I think I can just about say they’re not as crap as I used to think they were. Well, Episode I isn’t anyway. Episode II, however, is still an ugly blemish on the face of the series. It didn’t help that it was very hard for me to take Anakin seriously when he’s a dead ringer for my cousin – who is, just to enhance the bizarreness of the thing, of Jamaican descent. Go figure.

So while I was busy not being able to open my eyes for a long enough period to write on this blog, I spent the days afterward trolling the internet as I often do, and in my haze of semi-consciousness I arrived at the Star Wars version of Wikipedia. Yes, it’s “Wookiepedia” – possibly the best name for any website of any kind ever. Way back when (about five years ago), I used to read a fair few published Star Wars books, and for the most part enjoyed them immensely, but I had no idea of the extent of this ‘Expanded Universe’ that has been built by tie-in books, games, comics and graphic novels. It’s absolutely massive. Seriously, seriously huge. And a (rather large) group of dedicated fans have put it all into the Wookiepedia resource. Thanks to them, I’ve read with unashamedly childlike fun all kinds of things about the universe I either used to or never knew before. Over the years, the various novel series have built up a pretty solid forty-year story following on from Return of the Jedi, and it’s detailed with such love for the franchise that I was compelled to dig up some of the old X-Wing books I used to own and over the last couple of days I’ve realised to my pleasure that I wasn’t old enough to really appreciate them when I first read them. I’m now thoroughly enjoying working my way through as much of the series as I own, which is far more reading than I’ve done for an awful long time. So thank you, Wookiepedia. The Force is strong in you.

Five Days of Disappointment

My hearty apologies for not having posted for a few days. An end-of-term work rush has meant that the Desk has had to take a back seat, but now that I have a two-week break for Easter, it’s time to catch up on some of the things that have been going on while this blog wasn’t.

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Since my last post it’s been pretty much disappointing news after disappointing news.  Arthur C. Clarke’s death on Wednesday was particularly affecting – a true visionary, whose books I enjoyed thoroughly (although, to be fair, 2001: A Space Odyssey was far too slow) and way of thinking I always respected. Obviously, by the time I’d become familiar with his stories and, more importantly, his ideas on what might be possible in the technological future, a number of them had already come to pass, but it’s hard not to be impressed with the way he foresaw global communications satellites (nay, designed them) and NASA’s Spaceguard Survey that detects incoming asteroids. He’ll be missed.

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In slightly less life-or-death matters, I was also saddened to see that American TV network CBS has canceled Jericho, the sci-fi-ish drama about an isolated Kansas town being cut off from the rest of America after a nuclear attack. I didn’t watch Jericho when it the first season arrived on ITV4, but my mother did, and eventually I ended up catching the last five or six episodes, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Its plausibility was scary, and the writing and acting of a pretty good standard throughout. I knew the show had been canceled once already at the end of that season, but, in reference to a line of dialogue from an episode I sadly didn’t see, fans sent the network approximately 18,000 kilograms of peanuts until they relented and picked it up for a new season. So Jericho came back for season two, and now after 7 episodes it’s being pulled. Frankly, it’s a complete injustice, especially when you consider that the third (THIRD!) season of Grey’s Anatomy started on five two days ago. Ugh.

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However, it’s not all been doom and gloom. It turns out that they’ve figured out a way to allow mobile phone calls on aeroplanes! Oh, wait, that’s not good news. Have these scientists ever been on a train or a bus since the advent of the conveniently sized mobile? The law of averages states that on every flight operated by Emirates, the airline who have started this policy, there will be at least ten people who will now spend the entirety of the hours-long flight yelling into their phone to their mother, boyfriend, hairdresser, dog, etc., etc…

I am never flying ever, ever again.

See you tomorrow.

On poetry

Poetry. “Why?”, basically.

During a Spanish lesson today we were given a poem to examine, and I’m sorry to say that I don’t get the whole idea any more in a foreign language than I do my own. If you’re interested, it was called “Instantes” and was written by, as my teacher put it, “the Argentinian Sartre”. (Un)fortunately, I forgot the name.

I just don’t get poetry. I’m sorry, I’ve tried. I’ve had to try – GCSE English made me read heaps of the stuff. I just have to ask:

Why?

Why write in pretty patterns?

Why not just write in prose like sensible people?

Why sometimes rhyme and sometimes not?

Why do so many people like poetry so much?

WHY?

It occurs to me that I don’t have an awful lot of reasoning behind this. It must just be some sort of deep-seated aversion to poetry. I know I’m not the only one who just doesn’t understand it – maybe it’s genetic

I guess my point is – hey, Spanish teacher. I dropped English literature for a reason. please. No more poetry.

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In other news, sorry for the lack of a post on Sunday. Consider it karma for there being two in one day earlier this week.

Only in America: Two Years on a Toilet

I’m surprised I didn’t notice this story earlier, but it’s still as incredible. An American woman, Pam Babcock, has only just gotten off her boyfriend’s toilet after having been sitting there for two years.

It took him that long to stop just bringing her food and water every day and asking nicely if she’d like to come out before he finally called the police. I mean, what’s that about? I am finding it very difficult to put into words just how flabbergasted I am at this.

By the time somebody was called in to get her out her skin had grown around the bowl so that she was physically stuck to the thing. According to sheriff Bryan Whipple, she was “somewhat disoriented” and her legs had atrophied. Unsurprisingly, really, all things considered.

I don’t really know how I should react to this story. It’s possibly the maddest thing I’ve seen all year. Both the toilet enthusiast and her slow-to-react boyfriend must have something a little bit wrong with their brains – I’m guessing the latter is IQ-related but the former is surely something deeper and so I’m going easy on the mocking. However, I do have to say:

Only in America.

Re: Hugh Laurie, and a confession

If you’re expecting another wall of text like yesterday’s blog, then today you’re sorely mistaken, as I am attempting to fit this entry around selected snippets of the BBC’s Sport Relief marathon and catching up with House – I have 13 episodes of season three to watch before season 4 starts broadcasting on five on Thursday. Speaking of House, I should mention that I did at last get my hands on the Radio Times featuring the Hugh Laurie interview that I wrote about a few days ago. What surprised me was how downbeat he seemed on the future of the show, but surely as a show that was popular enough to survive the writers’ strike, it can theoretically go on for quite a while longer. I hope so, anyway.

But speaking of Sport Relief, there’s something I have to get off my chest. The only part of the evening’s programming that I have indulged in so far was hosted by a man whom it appears cool to actively dislike. I’ve never once read a good review of him, anywhere. But I’m sorry. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but dammit, I like Jimmy Carr!

I’m not going to write heaps about him – I mean, he’s funny, but he’s no Bill Bailey – but I just feel he gets a bit of a raw deal. So sue me, establishment.

Just to finish off (mainly to avoid making this post look tiny when compared to yesterday’s Eurovision marathon), here’s a joke I came across a week or so ago on the internet.

Luke Skywalker decides to take some time out from the stress of being a Jedi to take up a career in art education. He chooses to start by writing an informative pamphlet for kids about the many different shades of the colour purple. After writing the first draft, he feels it’s lacking something and goes to ask his friend Han Solo for feedback.

“Hey, Han,” says Luke, boarding the Millennium Falcon, “can you take a look at this pamphlet? I just feel it’s not quite right – any ideas?”

“I dunno, kid,” says Han, “have ya spelt ‘mauve’ right?”

“Yeah,” says Luke, “I spell-checked it twice.”

“Ah, probably right. I never was too great at spelling. Hey, maybe you should go ask Darth Vader.”

Luke agrees and pops over to the Death Star to talk to Vader.

“Hey dad,” he says, “I’ve been writing this pamphlet on the colour purple but I just feel it’s missing something. Can you help me?”

“Hurrr-haaaa, hurrr-haaaa,” breathes Vader, “Son, are you sure you have enough detail in your entry for ‘violet’?”

“Yes,” says Luke glumly, “I had an expert fill in that section, he seemed happy that it was detailed enough. Anything else?”

“No,” says Vader, “the force is strong in this pamphlet.”

Still not convinced, though, Luke flies to Dagobah to ask Yoda his opinion. The wise Jedi Master takes a look at the pamphlet and turns to Luke.

“Your problem, understand it I do.”

“You do?” asks Luke excitedly, “what is it then? What’s wrong with my instructional pamphlet on purple?”

Yoda points a finger at the offending section and says, “hard to see, the fuschia is.”

The wonders of the internet, eh?

Backseat blogging

A lack of “news” material today (I hope you weren’t expecting me to cover the fact that gold is trading at $1000 an ounce for the first time ever) means I’ve got to think of something myself without being prompted by such trivialities as breaking stories.

I guess I could do a token piece on the US Presidential “race” (I wish they’d stop calling it that, even a marathon takes less than a day), but quite frankly I’m getting so bored of the whole thing. Why they all can’t decide internally on their candidates, or have all the states vote on the same day, or just fix it for Bush again, is beyond me. JUST END IT NOW, AMERICA!

So I won’t talk about that then. I should mention in passing that after I sent a general pressure email to my friends two days ago when I launched this blog, in which I politely guilt-tripped them all into reading, I received a reply from one of them who clearly fancies himself as a bit of a backseat blogger. (Not to sound ungrateful, particular reader, I appreciate your contributions. Keep them coming.) Anyway, this guy gave me a little list of things he thought I should talk about, and with a lack of material I have indeed turned to this list. First on it was the US Democrat nomination, which I have covered above as much as I feel I can without losing my will to live, so I might as well finish off the list.

It reads, in full: “The US democrat nomination, look at your favourite webcomics, websites, whatever, or do something on Eurovision. Or movies.”

So,

1. See above.

2. I am a regular reader of Questionable Content by Jeph Jaques, Ctrl-Alt-Del by Tim Buckley, and PvP Online by Scott Kurtz.

3. My go-to website when I have nothing to do is the BBC Sport page. I don’t visit as many websites as perhaps I should, there are a lot of geeky ones that I’m missing out on. Suggestions in the form of comments are very welcome indeed. I’m also a recreational user of Facebook (studies show it’s wise to refer to such things in drugs terminology) and I am contractually obliged to regularly visit MyFootballClub.co.uk, as through it I am a shareholder in Ebbsfleet United FC. More on that when The CDB Pod launches.

4. In retrospect, “whatever” probably wasn’t a specific suggestion, but I’ve come too far to turn back now.

5. Eurovision. Is it just me, or is that a really strange thing to come to after discussing Presidential elections and the web? Eh, anyway. I have a mixed relationship with Eurovision, probably because I watch British television. From a British perspective, Eurovision is horrible. These people really have got to decide whether they are taking it seriously or not. On one hand, Terry Wogan makes lots of noises about “we need a winning entry this year” or whatever, which is fair enough, he clearly cares about the whole thing, but then the BBC force him to present a choose-Britain’s-entry show in which an entire third of the voting ballot is made up of people who have histories of not winning public-vote TV singing contests IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY, LET ALONE EUROPE? It’s really sad, because like any sensible Brit I like Terry Wogan immensely and I don’t think I can handle him getting hurt again.

I’m going to fall out of list format now because it’s become clear that I’m actually writing an entire article on Eurovision now, so that pesky reader has got his way. I hope you’re proud of yourself – this is what you’ve done to me.

Of course, I say that in a cynical, hurt sort of way, but the truth is I do actually really like Eurovision. I will always make sure I am free on the night of the contest so that I can watch it with my family, because it is a great television event, as long as you set yourself free of the despair and painfully inevitable doom that comes from believing the British are in with any chance at all. There is much entertainment to be had watching people who actually think the contest is important (i.e. any country east of Germany). Every year, you are guaranteed to find at least one song, usually a handful, that are either fantastic fun because they’re quirky or actually a really really good song. I still want to find a copy of the Serbia & Montenegro entry from 2002, I think it was, when Wogan was somehow surprised that everyone liked it. It was a great, mysterious traditional folk thing that crept up on you out of nowhere. They came third, and they deserved more, if not for that pesky Ukrainian girl wearing Xena-style leather and cracking a whip.

Back to my point on how Britain chooses its entry, one of the talent-show failures inevitably won, in this case pleasant-but-dull-as-dishwater X-Factor reject Andy Abraham, and I hope he enjoys his nul points. There’s no way in hell Europe will vote for him. I haven’t even heard the song – I couldn’t bear to watch the show – but I saw him a couple of times on X-Factor (my mother and sister were watching it. I couldn’t watch anything else, I swear) and he appears to have pigeonholed himself into the grandparents-approved superficial soul niche. Considering that in the last few years, whip-flailing Ukrainian “roleplayers”, Tim-Burton-meets-Slipknot death metal and a transsexual granny from, er, Ukraine again, have enjoyed huge success, I’m not sure instantly-forgettable soul is what Europe wants right now.

Which leads me on to this question – why do we ask the public, who, let’s not forget, constantly prove themselves to be morons, choose between a bunch of people we’ve either never heard of before or have previously decided via a similar process are not talented enough to make it? Granted, it isn’t the 70s anymore, but Cliff Bloody Richard (full name) entered the thing about a million times back in the day! Many countries do actually enter people who have actual careers in music, and they do pretty well in general. I remember a conversation I had with my mother a few years ago when, for some unfortunate reason, Emma Bunton (Baby Bloody Spice, also a full name) came on the telly with some godawful video for some godawful song. This was her comeback before last, I hasten to add – the song got into the top 10, not #67 which I believe was as far as her latest attempt got – when she was actually popular. And my mother asked me “why don’t we get Emma Bunton to do Eurovision?”, and I couldn’t find a suitable answer for it. That was the year we entered James Fox, to put it into context. (What? You don’t remember him? Surely not, he came fourth in Fame Academy!)

So next year, can we please ditch the public phone vote and have at most three people who are involved in the music business in some way, and let them enquire to some actual musicians as to whether they’d like a go at restoring British pride. Call me crazy, but this year Britain are going to get beaten by a puppeted turkey. We cannot let that happen again.

The emailer had other points in his list, but I’ve forgotten what they are.

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P.S. A quick plug for a fantastic Eurovision book, Nul Points by Tim Moore. This fellow took it upon himself to visit everyone who ever scored the famous zero points, and it makes for a great read. Do check it out.

What do Britney Spears and Jeremy Clarkson have in common?

…They both owned themselves today, to my great amusement.

Let’s start with that bastion of good decision-making, Britney Spears. Having previously appeared in critically-slaughtered movie Crossroads in 2002 and guested on Will and Grace in 2006 (insert your own “Oops, I did it again” joke here, I have better things to do with my time), she’s now gone and landed herself a guest role on another American sitcom, How I Met Your Mother (never seen it, sounds crap. I will accept that as fact for the purpose of this post). Now, surely the last thing Troubled Singer Britney Spears (apparently that’s her full name now) needs after much public embarrassment this last year or so is, uh…more public embarrassment. I’ve not seen Crossroads (sounds like I was one of the lucky ones), but I did catch a glimpse of her turn on Will and Grace, and I’m not saying her efforts had anything to do with that particular series promptly ending for good, but…

Speaking of voices I’m tired of hearing, occasional TV host and full-time prat Jeremy Clarkson, who for many people is the number one authority on cars (by “many people” I’m guessing he means his own family, and even they must be reluctant), decided recently that he’d just take a few minutes to make a call on his mobile while driving, and then drove too closely to somebody who both owned a cameraphone (84 million worldwide) and recognised his face (100% of the UK population, says the Ministry of Fabricated Statistics That Are Probably True Anyway) – what were the chances, eh, Jeremy? When asked about the photo that was taken of his law-breaking antics, Clarkson didn’t comment, probably because he couldn’t hear the question what with his head so far up his backside.

Much as I’d rather never to hear of either of these two ever again, it’s little things like this that help me get through the day. Looking forward to Clarkson’s next appearance as guest host of Have I Got News For You now (and I never thought I’d hear myself say that…)

Hugh Laurie: “snubbed by Britain”?

So apparently Hugh Laurie (yeah, that Hugh Laurie, i.e. the best actor on TV in House) feels he’s been “snubbed” by Britain since he became the super-mega-star in the US. This is from an interview in the new issue of the Radio Times, which was released in the UK today – unfortunately, as I live in the Netherlands at the moment, I won’t be able to read it in full until Friday, but that won’t stop me from making an uninformed judgement on the situation, oh no.

I read this story, therefore, on the BBC News website, and this is how they word the story:

The award-winning star told the Radio Times the hours on the show are “relentless” and he has not been offered any work in his home country.

“The door slammed behind me, and that’s it. There’s a notion that I’ve sold out,” said the performer.

Now, is it just me, or is the fact that Laurie has “relentless hours” working on House possibly the reason that he’s not getting any work in the UK? I mean, he’s doing this for 20-odd weeks a year, which, yes, leaves time during the off-season, but would surely be a possible, if not probable, stumbling block for many producers and directors trying to get a project off the ground.

That said, I am inclined to sympathise with Laurie, despite any misgivings, because he’s clearly a ridiculously intelligent and talented man – I’ve always loved his work, particularly on House, the third season of which I am working my way through on DVD at the moment – so much so that you’ve got to think that anyone who wants to work with him would surely try to plan production when House is in its hiatus.

With any luck this story (though big, big news it is definitely not) might kick some British employers into finding a job for Laurie, who’s clearly keen on such an idea. Frankly, they should be waiting hand and foot on him.