Listless in Crapchester

It's been one of those weeks, hasn't it?  I seem to have spent most of mine trying to get an appointment for my Covid vaccine booster shot.  Which should have been simple, except that every time I tried, the NHS booking service directed me to vaccination centres in different towns, anywhere up to thirty miles away, despite the fact that my local centre is less then two miles from me.  Finally, about an hour ago, it let me book an appointment at said vaccination centre.  Apparently, I'm not the only one here in Crapchester experiencing this problem - the NHS web site is referring locals everywhere except to their local centre.  Not to worry, I'm sure that the site was set up by some Tory donor who has received millions of taxpayers money for coming up with this non-functioning app.  But it was just another distraction in what has been a listless week for me as, once more, I get very little done.  As reflected by this week's posts.  Don't worry, I'll get back to posting pop culture related stuff soon I just need to watch some more schlock.

Speaking of which, I have been watching quite a bit of low grade streaming TV of late.  None of it is exactly schlock, but it is pretty low rent.  For one thing, I've found myself watching a channel that shows nothing but old cartoons.  And I mean old.  While the odd forties or fifties Bugs Bunny cartoon sometimes turns up, most of those featured date back to the thirties, often in black and white, taken from very scratchy prints with crackly sound.  They're packaged into programmes which are presented by various young girls, whose presenting styles can be, to put it mildly, fascinating.  There's a blonde one who I'm sure must be on something, she always seems so unnaturally exuberant and perky, by contrast, there's another one with dark hair who gives the impression that she's being forced at gun point to present these cartoons, so reluctant does she seem.  Some of the cartoons are completely unknown to me, (obviously, they were never shown in the UK):  'Clutch Cargo', for instance, which is basically a series of still drawings with some very limited animation and the superimposed lips of the voice artist providing the speech.  Having seen several episodes, I'm still no clearer as to why he is called 'Clutch'.  

Then there's this streaming TV service I'm fascinated by - it has an ever fluid line-up of' channels' which, presumably for copyright reasons, all show the same couple of dozen or so films and TV episodes, just on different schedules and in different orders.  I'm assuming that the majority of this content is public domain.  Apparently, in the past, the service's channels showed lots of old TV and films, presumably without permission, as it all vanished, virtually overnight, leaving the current limited service.  Still, limited or not, some of it is stuff I either haven't seen in decades, or have never seen at all.