Another New Arrival on the Model Railway

Another recent locomotive acquisition.  This is an ex-Southern Railway Q1 class freight locomotive.  Locos designed purely for freight work were a rarity on the Southern, which was mainly a passenger carrying company, so tended to prefer mixed traffic locomotives.  The Q1, logically, followed the earlier Q class which, like the later loco, was an 0-6-0 design, but of much more conventional construction and appearance.  The Q1 was designed and built during wartime, with its design intended to use less metal than conventional designs and facilitate easier maintenance by removing such things as running plates and wheel splashers.  

The model itself, which I obtained from an online retailer, is constructed from a white metal kit by an unknown builder.  It has actually been completed to a pretty high standard and given some very effective light weathering.  It is also a very good runner, which isn't always the case with a kit-built chassis.  Whilst the model itself gives no clue as to the manufacturer of the kit, Wills Finecast (now South Eastern Finecast) produced a white metal kit and I at first suspected that it was one of these.  Close examination of the chassis, however, revealed it to be a K's kit, the use of the 'keyhole' method for inserting the axles being the giveaway.  As far as I'm aware, K's were the only kit manufacturer to use this method, (which involves the axles being inserted into the frames via the open narrow end of a keyhole shaped opening then held in place by the bearings, which fit into the wider, circular, upper part of the 'keyhole'), although Hornby used a similar system on some of its eighties models (albeit with arch shaped openings and the bearings and axels held in place by a plastic keeper plate screwed to the chassis underside).

Anyway, it's a very nice model, more robust than the ready-to-run Hornby version, not to mention significantly cheaper.  It's a prototype I didn't already have a model of and fills a gap in my locomotive roster.  I look forward to running it in properly once I've finally sorted out the renovation and expansion of my layout.

Sleazy Scary Stories

Vincent Price and Peter Lorre crawl out from their catacombs to disinter a trio of sleazy scary stories from the musty archives of ‘The Sleaze’. Join them to listen to three tales from the seamier side of horror: ‘The Ghost Gropers’, ‘Split Sexuality’ and ‘Flushed With Fear’.

Tremble as we uncover a disturbing new paranormal craze gripping Britain’s youth, as they try to raise the spirits of deceased and disgraced celebrity sex offenders. Will they be groped from beyond the grave?

Shudder as our paranormal agony aunt, the Reverend Leonard Fanny, advises a mad medic who seems to be in two minds over his spiritual sexuality. Can the Rev save his soul, let alone his sex life?

Recoil in horror at the story of a toilet that terrorised the occupants of an English hotel. Is there any way that the killer kazi can be tamed before it flushes in the apocalypse?

Put on your ‘ear goggles’ and enjoy this trilogy of sleazy scary stories that will make you shiver with fear and revulsion!

Click here to listen: Sleazy Scary Stories 

Pan-Dimensional Waste Disposal

So, there's an obvious solution to all of our problems with the waste and pollution created by our modern world.  One which has clearly been sign-posted by quantum physics and its theory that a multitude of  parallel universes co-exist alongside ours.  That's right, we dump all of our shit - both literal and figurative - into one of these parallel universes.  Preferably one that it is uninhabited, obviously.  Well, mostly uninhabited.  I mean, just so long as the bit where we're doing the dumping doesn't have any life developed enough to complain to the local council, or take us to court, we'll be OK.  All it needs is for those scientists at the Large Hadron Collider, or somewhere, to open up a portal to these other universes and we're away.  Just imagine it - a clean earth, at last.  No more landfills, no more shit in the rivers and ocean, no sewage treatment plants, no having to seal away radioactive waste for thousands of years.  We can crap and consume to our hearts' content, secure in the knowledge that we can export all of our waste, no matter how toxic it might be, to somewhere that we don't have to think about.  It's a concept that could revolutionise every form of waste disposal.  Just imagine if a miniature stable portal to this hypothetical dump universe could be mass produced - every home could have an inter-dimensional waste disposal unit.  No more weekly bin collections or having to sort out the recycling.  Just send it all into another universe.  Sewers would become obsolete - the waste pipe of every toilet would feed into one of these portals.  It really would be a case of 'flush and forget'.  Think of the water that could be saved this way.

We could do the same thing on a larger scale for industry.  Instead of dumping their toxic waste into the nearest river, factories could just dump it into a river in another universe.  Same with nuclear waste and medical waste.  Of course, the downside of this is that, if developed commercially, you can guarantee that the makers of this technology would cut corners to maximise profits and do only the most cursory checks to ensure that all of our waste was going to an uninhabited universe.  I mean, they aren't going to want to waste money searching through literally thousands of other universes in the hope of finding an empty one.  If the likes of Elon musk were behind it, for instance, you can just bet that it turns out that we're basically taking a dump all over Narnia and, before you know it, hordes of vengeful mythical beasts will be surging out of our wardrobes and shitting all over our houses in retaliation.  The biggest risk will come if the inhabitants of one of these parallel universes were to develop this technology first and start randomly dumping their shit into the first alternative universe they find.  We could be faced with the horrific prospect of a phantom arse suddenly appearing in your living room, just as you are sitting down to watch Eastenders, and taking a huge steaming dump all over your TV, before disappearing.  Or worse, all over you.  Which is why it is essential that we get in first in this potential inter-reality shit-throwing contest.  If we can take pre-emptive dumps into as many alternate universes as possible, then we can, hopefully, bury any of these bastards under a pile of our waste and effluent before they can hit us.  You know it makes sense.

Black Marketing

Well, at least now we know how to keep Reform UK MPs at bay: we send David Lammy round to their houses and have him pull faces at them through the windows, such is their apparent terror of black people.  I mean, if just seeing non-white people in TV commercials offends them, then imagine what the effect of having one on their front lawn will be - doubtless sending them cowering behind their sofa, or shrieking in fear before hiding in a cupboard.  Of course, Lammy might have to dress up as a Zulu warrior, stick a bone through his nose and shout 'Ooga, booga, booga!' as he waves a spear, in order to entirely fulfil their racist expectations.  Now, I'm sure that you are going to say that I'm being grossly unfair, as it was only one Reform MP who was going on about how the number of non-white people featured in TV ads upset her.  Moreover, as her 'glorious' leader Nigel Fartage has pointed out, she was merely pointing out the fact that non-white people are over-represented in these ads, which don't correctly reflect the true demographics of Britain, so therefore what she said couldn't be racist.  Except that it is, because she is effectively saying that casting directors should discriminate against people on the basis of their race in order to fulfil some kind of 'quota'.  Which sounds almost 'woke', which I always thought that Reform was against.  And, yeah, all of those other Reform UK MPs, not to mention the people who vote for them, couldn't possibly be racists, could they?  Even though, if one of them makes racist statements, that constitutes about 20% of their parliamentary strength.  So maybe only a fifth of them are hardcore racists, with the other 80% being only casual racists, who either only think racist things, or only say them in private.

Even if we were to give the benefit of the doubt to these comments and accept that they aren't racist (even though they are), they are still profoundly ignorant.  The reason that UK TV commercials are so diverse in casting terms is because we live in a diverse society and, guess what, it isn't just white people who buy the stuff being advertised.  Non-white people are a valuable potential market who, if they don't see people like them in the advertising of goods, might decide that they aren't the target audience and be less inclined to buy them.   It's simple economics and basic good business practice.  Moreover, many of the ads are probably not actually 'UK' TV ads - they are actually international ads which will be shown on TV stations all over the world, including markets where white people aren't the majority.  But what the heck, why let simple facts get in the way of a good racist rant?  Worryingly, this incident is just the latest in a disturbing new trend of right-wing MPs pushing the limits to see what they can get away with saying, before being called out as racists, then falling back on the excuse that they were merely making a factual observation rather than a racist comment.  Because, while it might be true that the number of non-white people seen in TV commercials doesn't reflect precisely the UK's racial mix, or that you can walk through Handsworth in Birmingham and not see another white face because of the area's demographics, it is both the context and source of such 'factual statements', that give them away as having racist intent - ambitious right-wingers trying to impress at party conferences or as guests on right-wing talk shows on right-wing TV channels.  If you are going to be a racist, at least have the balls to come out and be honest about it.  After all, these are the people who claim to represent Britain's 'silent majority', although their apparent desire not to be seen as racist strongly implies that they actually know that, in this respect, at least, they don't represent a majority opinion.

Illusory Politics

Maybe, at the next general election, we can set it up somehow that there is a parallel ballot, whereby those voting for extremists like Reform UK, the whatever-fuck-it-is -called Corbyn/Sultana party and the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, (should he carry through his threat to stand against Ed Milliband, although he won't, as he's all piss and vinegar), are actually part of a 'shadow election', which elects a 'shadow parliament'.  This make believe parliament, housed in a replica of the real parliament, can elect whoever it likes as Prime Minister and can carry on as if it is actually running the country when, in fact, it is all fake.  After all, the likes of Farage are only really in politics because of their egos.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, they actually believe that they somehow have the intelligence and know how to run the country.  They want that feeling of power which will further boost their already over-inflated egos.  So why not let them think that they are?  That they have completely banished the moderates are in sole charge?  Along with a fake House of Commons, we could have a fake Downing Street and a series of fake TV news broadcasts chronicling their 'triumphs'.  Whole state visits and meetings with foreign leaders could be faked for them, with actors playing the likes of Trump, Macron and Putin.  Damn it, perhaps we could even let Farage think that he's ended the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Now, I know what you are thinking: isn't this some kind of subversion of the democratic process?  Well, technically, yes.  But the fact is that if these people were to be allowed to hold power for real thanks to the idiocies of the UK electorate, then the whole democratic system would be at dire risk, (just look at what is happening in the US after they insanely allowed Trump back into the White House).  The only question is, what would we do with this whole fake parliament and government after five years?  Run the scam again, even though it would be costly to do it once, let alone multiple times?  Of course, with technology rapidly advancing, an alternative would be to place all of these fake MPs into an immersive AI simulation, where the alternative parliament and government can exist in virtual reality.  Like in The Matrix films.  Again, we couldn't keep them there indefinitely, so we could run the simulation to be more realistic, in that all of their policies and overall amateurish approach to politics ends, as it inevitably would in real life, in disaster, with them all losing their seats at the next simulated general election as a consequence.  Then they could be released back into the real world, thinking that they had been kicked out of power and not questioning the existence of a parliament in which they don't exist.  Hopefully, they'd be suitably chastised by such a (simulated) humiliation at the (simulated) ballot box.  But somehow, I doubt it.  Egos like that can't be so easily dented.  Even by reality.

Crapchester Halloween Chaos, or Hallucinogenic Halloween Revisited

OK, we're back to my experiments with AI.  I hadn't played with Google's Notebook LM for a while and I was looking to produce some new audio for a podcast I'm working on, so I was intrigued to find that the app now also offers to produce a video presentation based on sources you provide.  So, using a seasonal story from a couple of years ago - Hallucinogenic Halloween - I produced both the regular audio output, with the two AI characters discussing the story and this audiovisual slide show. (which, rather disturbingly, reminds me of some of the PowerPoint presentations I made myself, back in the day when I was teaching, to accompany lessons).  

The first thing to note about this particular video presentation is that, from the off, it correctly identifies the story as being satirical and the setting fiction.  This seems to me to be a significant step forward, as other parts of Notebook LM still seem to treat the source at face value.  Moreover, the source itself gives no internal indication that it is satirical fiction, (for human readers, the fact that it is published on a site openly declaring itself as satirical and ridiculousness of its content are sufficient).  Oddly, though, the presentation, having established these facts, then goes on to discuss the source story as if it were somehow presenting legitimate points.

Anyway, it was an interesting exercise and I can't deny that I find the result quite amusing.  Sure, I know that it still isn't a very good use of AI, let alone a good enough excuse to burn up some more of the world's resources and edge us further toward the global warming tipping point.  But Hell, with Trump in power doing his best to undermine the fight against climate change, we're all doomed, anyway, so we might as well have some fun on the road to Hell. 

Pumpkin to the Groin

We're at that time of year again, when people start buying pumpkins, contemplating dressing up as monsters and serial killers and planning to try and scare complete strangers.  The allure of Halloween tends to escape me, possibly because when I was young we didn't have this US-inspired version of the season, we just bobbed for apples and such like and, if we were lucky, the BBC might show an old Hammer film we'd be allowed to stay up and watch.  'Trick or Treat' simply didn't exist in our world - it was just something we sometimes glimpsed, in bemused fashion, on US TV shows.  I have to say, though, that in recent times the idea of knocking on vulnerable pensioners' doors at night, attempting to extort sweets from them under threat of scaring the bejasus out of them, has begun to appeal to me more.  Particularly if we cut out the extortion bit and just cut straight to the scaring bit - putting on a mask and hurling eggs at some of my neighbours' houses has definite appeal.  Especially if we substitute 'excrement' for 'eggs'.  Even more especially if we were to substitute 'neighbours' houses' for, say, Nigel Farage's house, (which was paid for by his partner, who is currently the subject of an EU fraud investigation - obviously the two couldn't be connected, just saying), or Stephen Yaxley-Lennon's gaff (although that patriotic 'man of the people' would probably be out, driving to Spain, Portugal or Cyprus or one of his other hideouts, in a borrowed Bentley full of cash).  

Of course, if we were in the US, we'd be looking forward to our annual opportunity to 'trick or treat' at the White House and try to scare Old Man Trump to death.  I mean, it surely wouldn't take much to shock that grossly overweight, demented and wheezing wreck into turning up his toes.  The best thing is that it would be very difficult for them to prove it was an assassination - even if they could catch the pesky kids involved, (let's face it, on the evidence of their attempts to find the assassin of Charlie Kirk, it's clear that under Kash Patel the FBI couldn't find their own fart in a bathtub), which would be difficult as they'd all be dressed as The Mummy, Frankenstein's Monster, The Wolfman or Elon Musk - as the cause of death would be 'natural causes'.  Maybe, from now until Halloween, intrepid operatives of favourite fantasy terror group 'Antifa' could spend their time creeping up behind Trump, bursting inflated paper bags, blowing horns or shouting 'Boo!' in the hope of causing a fatal stroke.  Or maybe they could throw pumpkins - preferably carved in Trump's own image - at him, in hope of a fatal hit.  (I recall that, back in the day, the UK saw a spate of vegetable-related assaults, involving cabbages, cauliflowers and courgettes being thrown at people from speeding cars, resulting in at least one casualty).  Even if they couldn't manage a fatal strike, it would still be bloody hilarious to see the 'Orange Shitgibbon' take a huge pumpkin to the face.  Or even better, to the groin.  Damn it, the thought of him getting a pumpkin in the cobblers as he addresses a crowd or press conference, with him doubling up in agony, shouting 'Son of a bitch!' as he clutches his groin, is already making me laugh in expectation.  God, Halloween's great, isn't it?

Son of Dr Jekyll (1951)

Yet another offspring of Dr Jekyll, it has to be said that Son of Dr Jekyll (1951) is a good deal less entertaining than his sister, featured in Daughter of Dr Jekyll (1957), although the two films share many plot points and concepts.  Whilst Seymour Friedman's direction is, in places, reasonably atmospheric, overall the film feels slow and ponderous, taking an age to establish every plot point as it lumbers to an obvious conclusion that mirrors its opening.  Visually, it lacks any of the off-beat directorial touches that Edgar G Ulmer was to bring to Daughter of Dr Jekyll six years later, despite, being a studio production, having better production values.  The script does, at least, retain a few of the supporting characters from the Robert Louis Stevenson original, giving Son of Dr Jekyll a sheen of false verisimilitude, despite departing radically from the premise of the novella.  As with Daughter of Dr Jekyll, we have a child of the late doctor, having been brought up by adoptive parents (in this case Utterson) under an assumed name following his parents' deaths, (the prologue shows Hyde murdering his wife, before being chased by a mob to Dr Jekyll's house, which is set ablaze with the fiend inside and Dr Jekyll emerging from an upstairs window to fall to his death), being appraised of his true name and heritage.  This offspring of Jekyll is already a scientist - kicked out of one institution for his unusual experiments into human nature - and decides, against the advice of his father's executor, Dr Lanyon, to clear his father's reviled name.  Predictably, a series of murders ensue, with the short-tempered Jekyll Junior implicated in all of them. 

At this point, the script becomes highly confusing, apparently unclear as to whether young Jekyll is the victim of hereditary, in that he has inherited the violent tendencies of the Hyde part of his parentage, or the ability to transform into a monster of the Jekyll part.  Add to that he does actually replicate his father's formula, which apparently briefly turns him into a Hyde-like figure, although the formula has, in fact, been sabotaged by Lanyon, (who is after the Jekyll fortune, which he will retain control of if the son dies or is declared insane), implying that Jekyll senior's original, unadulterated, serum wouldn't have transformed him, and the confusion is complete.  The scenario now seems to be moving toward that of Daughter of Dr Jekyll, with a seemingly benign guardian turning out to be the real monster, with the implication seemingly being that, like his equivalent in the later film, it was Lanyon who created a serum which turned him into Hyde back in the day, (which further implies that far from being Jekyll's son, the son of Dr Jekyll is actually the Son of Dr Lanyon/Mr Hyde).  But there's a further twist, with Lanyon, during the final confrontation with Jekyll junior, stating that while he was the one who murdered his mother and father, he did so in disguise as Hyde, using make up to change his appearance!  So was there ever really a Mr Hyde?  Was it Lanyon all the time?  In which case Dr Jekyll's work was a complete failure and the central idea of the source novel, that the good and evil sides of human nature could be chemically separated, is completely obviated.  In this respect, the film shares Daughter of Dr Jekyll's apparent ambition to completely write Mr Hyde out of the picture, (there the late Dr Jekyll was accused of being a werewolf, but actually wasn't, his friend and colleague Dr Lomas having been the werewolf all along).

The obsession with eliminating Mr Hyde, reframing Jekyll as a benign scientist trying to help mankind but being undermined by a jealous colleague, along with the strange implication that a transformation effected by a serum might become hereditary, are common to both films.  Which is hardly surprising, as they share a writer in Jack Pollexfen, who, perhaps unhappy with his ideas' treatment in Son of Dr Jekyll, remade his script as Daughter of Dr Jekyll.  While Son of Dr Jekyll isn't a bad film - it has some decent production values and surprisingly strong cast headed by Louis Hayward and Alexander Knox - it simply isn't a very interesting film, bogged down by too much exposition, too much screen time devoted to a complicated and unlikely conspiracy sub-plot and a script so confusing that it loses all sense of direction.  Daughter of Dr Jekyll, by contrast, covers much the same ground plot-wise and even has a similarly muddled script, but, via the aching low-budget Allied Artists production values and Edgar G Ulmer's typically off-kilter direction, transforms it all into a much faster paced and utterly lunatic film which, at times, feels like a hallucinatory experience.  Consequently, with its more conventional approach to the same subject matter, Son of Dr Jekyll, unfortunately, comes over as a far less enjoyable viewing experience.

Terminal Island (1973)

For viewers of a certain age, the most interesting aspect of Terminal Island (1973) lies in the cast, with early appearances from two of the stars of Magnum PI  - Tom Selleck and Roger E Mosley -and a post-Lost in Space appearance from Marta Kristen.  A typically cheap and cheerful exploitation piece from Dimension Pictures, Terminal Island has a pretty straightforward premise: in a near future (in 1973, at least), the US, having abolished the death penalty, instead sends its worst convicted offenders to a remote island, to fend for themselves.  The surrounding sea is constantly patrolled by warships to discourage escape attempts and armed guards make regular deliveries of essential supplies.  The problem is that it really has no idea where to go after this set-up, instead opting for a survival narrative with a new arrival caught between two rival groups of prisoners.  All the usual tropes are there - the small number of women are treated as chattels and sex slaves by the dominant group, rival men fight over them and the leader of the dominant group is a ruthless psycho who kills any potential rival, for instance.  While the main group holds the island's settlement, the others have been exiled to the wilderness and there are various changes of allegiance, with the women escaping from the settlement and joining up with the other group and Tom Selleck's doctor likewise changing sides.

The fact that all of the main characters are prisoners, convicted for the most brutal and heinous of crimes, makes it difficult for viewers to sympathise with most of them,  A point apparently recognised by the makers, as Selleck's character is revealed to have been convicted of a mercy killing, presumably considered a more 'acceptable' form of homicide, while Kristen, it turns out, was responsible for constructing a bomb for student protesters, which subsequently killed someone.  With its black heroine and feminist undertones (the women are clearly the most intelligent and resourceful people on the island, subjugated by the males simply on the basis of physical strength), the film also touches on other popular exploitation sub-genres such as Blaxploitation, as well as, in effect, being a variation on the 'women-in-prison' genre.  The feminist themes is unsurprising bearing in mind that the film is directed by Stephanie Rothman, a pioneering female director in the exploitation field, (who also directed the interesting and stylish Velvet Vampire (1972) for Roger Corman).  To her credit, she avoids the film falling into the worst of exploitation tropes by avoiding any rape scenes.  Indeed, even nudity is kept to a minimum, a surprising choise for an exploitation film of this era and with this sort of subject matter.  Production values - most of the film is shot outdoors Lake Sherwood - are rough and ready, but the pace is good and the performances decent.  While somewhat lacking in originality, Terminal island is, nonetheless, a solid piece of above average seventies exploitation. 

Anti-Christ, or Just a Deluded Old Man?

It seems that the Anti-Christ is back.  Or rather, talk about the Anti-Christ is back.  In another depressing sign that we seem to be entering a new Dark Age, an Age of Unreason, if you will, ushered in by players who seem to want to reverse all of the scientific, intellectual and social progress made since the enlightenment, in favour of a return to mediaeval values, we now have deluded US billionaires ranting on about how the Anti-Christ's arrival is imminent and that we're about to enter the 'End Times'.  Now, I know that there have always been nutters in the US spouting this shit, but previously it was confined to crazed extremists from the margins of the Christian faith.  But now it is coming from what some might describe as more mainstream sources, primarily tech billionaire and Trump backer Peter Thiel.  For those of us still in possession of our powers of reason, his warnings about the Anti-Christ seem somewhat disingenuous as, arguably, he is one of the people who has helped facilitate the accession to the US presidency of the closest thing to the Anti-Christ that can exist in a rational world.  I mean, really, have Thiel and his acolytes never seen The Omen III, when the Anti-Christ becomes US President and plots to bring about Armageddon?  OK, I know that Anti-Christ was a lot more charismatic, normal looking and, frankly, likeable, than Trump, but the analogy stands.  Which begs the question of why, like the film, we don't have bands of fanatical monks trying to stab Trump with magic daggers?  Or even just some other world leader, during a visit to the White House, whipping out a crucifix and shouting 'By the power of Christ, I command you back to Hell!', before touching him with the cross which will cause him to burst into flames before vanishing into the ground, screaming.

But obviously, he isn't the Anti-Christ, just a demented and ailing old man determined to play out his revenge fantasies - against both individuals and institutions, including democracy itself - before he dies.  The Anti-Christ is an entirely fictional creature of superstition, talk of whom, let alone belief in, has no part in the modern world.  As noted, the Anti-Christ is part of a mediaeval belief system.  Which makes it even more bizarre that someone who has made billions from technology should now be invoking his name.  Let's face it, back in that mediaeval belief system that Thiel wants to resurrect, the sort of tech that he deals in would be perceived as evidence of witchcraft and he would inevitably find himself being persecuted by witch hunters, tried and convicted and burned at the stake.  (Unless he was in England, where he would have been hanged, as burning was reserved for heretics).  The ultimate irony.  But just what is his motivation for all this Anti-Christ bollocks?  Possibly to scare impressionable Americans and reinforce the idea promoted by the Q Anon conspiracy and various religious fanatic in the US that Trump is their only saviour.  It is entirely possible that he and his fellow billionaires would like to usher in a theocracy of some kind for the US, believing that they could control it from behind the scenes.  Such a theocracy would, inevitably, enforce the sort of conservative 'values' that the US right seems to like so much:  a reversal of things like women's rights, gay and trans rights, legislation designed to eliminate racial discrimination, not to mention religious tolerance.  It would also represent a step toward their aim of effectively eliminating democracy, replacing it with a technocracy, (a religious technocracy, perhaps, of the kind you see in science fiction stories, where the 'miracles' performed by priests are actually the result of advanced technology), with the real power lying in the hands of those billionaire tech bros.  Sound crazy?  Before Trump returned to the White House, I might have agreed, but in light of the destruction wrought in his name since January, I'm not so sure.

Halloween Come Early?

It's that time of year - the time of creeping Halloween, as the decorations associated with the season start appearing.  Not just in shops, but also in people's gardens and homes.  It all starts with the odd fake cobweb lighting up someone's window, an occasional plastic pumpkin on their doorstep, but before you know it, gardens are full of illuminated fake skeletons, inflatable witches are hanging out on top of porches and kids are wandering around dressed as ghouls attempting to scare old age pensioners to death by leering through their windows and shoving burning, petrol soaked, rags through their letter boxes, shouting 'trick or treat you old bastards'.  Only this evening, I encountered the creepiest Halloween related 'decoration' I've seen so far.  Strolling back home along my street from where I had parked my car, after having had to take a massive diversion on my way back from the local Toy and Model Train Fair thanks to a road closure which had magically appeared, without warning, in the time I had been looking at old Tri-ang locomotives, I noticed a strange flickering light, low on the ground, as I approached the terrace which contains my house.  Approaching, I saw that in the gravelled area outside the last house before the steps up to the terrace, there were three large candles of varying heights, in weird looking holders, all flickering away just below the doorstep of the front entrance.  

At first, I assumed that they were artificial flames, that I was looking at some sort of battery powered lantern.  But no, when I got closer, I could clearly see that these were actual flames coming from the lit wicks of actual candles.  Obviously, the first question which came to mind was, why?  I mean, it seems a little early to be burning creepy looking candles (they were black) in your garden if they are meant as some sort of Halloween decoration.  They'll be burned out well before the thirty first, probably before morning.  But who would think that black candles were a suitable Halloween decoration - Satanists, witches?  Usually, the only lit candles you see on Halloween are in hollowed out pumpkins.  Then again, I reasoned, perhaps the people who live there are Satanists or witches and that the candles were there as a signal to other members of the coven that there was a meeting there tonight.  But my next thought was that maybe the house's occupants themselves hadn't put the candles there - perhaps they weren't Satanists or witches, but had somehow crossed the local representatives of one or the other and were now being marked for a terrible revenge.  Perhaps those candles were there so that the devils and other supernatural entities raised against them knew where to go to wreak bloody vengeance.  Personally, I had always assumed that marking the front door with a pentacle would be the way to do this, but what do I know?  Clearly, I'm not going to know whether they have become victims of a Satanic cult until tomorrow, when the police break in and find the place full of blood and dismembered entrails.  I'm sure that the sound of the sirens will alert me.

The World of Henry Orient (1964)

Thanks to it being the hundredth anniversary of Peter Sellers' birth, there's been, in some places, a fair amount of coverage of his life and career.  But not, perhaps, as much as might be expected for someone who was, in his day, such an iconic comedy figure.  Time, unfortunately, erodes cultural heritages, particularly where someone like Sellers, who died relatively young, are concerned.  While a career cut short in this way means that he didn't suffer the seemingly inevitable retreat into reactionary contrarianism which betrays their earlier work which seems to bedevil comics as they grow older, it does also mean that their presence in the public consciousness quickly fades.  In Sellers' case, another big factor lies in his decision to pursue his cinematic ambitions over other media, meaning that, for contemporary viewers, his legacy is confined to the films he appeared in.  Unfortunately, for someone of his reputation, Sellers' body of film work is extremely patchy.  Indeed, his cinematic CV boasts far more failures than successes, including a whole run of films in the seventies that nobody went to see and which, to this day, remain rarely screened anywhere - The Optimists of Nine Elms, Hoffman and Ghost in the Noonday Sun all spring to mind in this respect.  In fact, by the seventies, and much to his disappointment, the only films that people seemed to want to see him in were the Pink Panther films.  These failures, (which stretched back into the sixties - just think of Mr Topaz, for instance, as a Sellers film that lies completely forgotten and unlamented), weren't simply down to bad choices of material on his part, but also to his ambitions to be a leading man (abetted by studios who thought they could exploit his talents in leads), whereas, in reality, he was a very skilled character actor.  The reason that the Pink Panther films were such successes were that not only did they allow him to fully indulge his anarchic comedic talents, with Blake Edwards allowing him to improvise, but that he also didn't have to carry them a conventional lead, thanks to strong supporting casts and semi-serious plots. (In fact, it is worth remembering that Clouseau started as a supporting character in the first Pink Panther film).

Anyway, all of this came to mind for me over the weekend when I caught up with another of his lesser known films: The World of Henry Orient (1964).  Interestingly, this is a film which was actually popular on its release, proving a box office success but which has, over the years, fallen somewhat into obscurity.  Watching it today, it is still a very enjoyable film, beautifully shot on New York locations, which capture perfectly the changing seasons which underpin the story, and very effectively directed by George Roy Hill.  Perhaps the main reason that it has faded from the public memory is that, despite his top billing and the fact that he plays the title character, Peter Sellers isn't really the star - his character has only limited screen time, (which Sellers makes the most of in his portrayal of Orient, a wholly unsympathetic womanising, arrogant but insecure and cowardly, concert pianist, forever in fear of the husband of one of his mistresses turning up to confront him).  In reality, the main characters, who get most of the screen time and whose stories the film follows, are the two schoolgirls, both in their early teens, who develop a fixation with Orient after a couple of chance encounters and start following him around New York.  Which, of course, simply fuels his paranoia, as he starts to fear that they are child detectives employed by a suspicious husband.  Consequently, much of the film's success rests on the performances of the actresses playing the two girls.  In the event, both give hugely engaging performances, despite their youth, with both characters, despite both coming from somewhat dysfunctional family backgrounds, always remain likeable and sympathetic, full of the strange ideas, skewed world views and diversions into fantasy typical of children of their age group.  Their conversations are particularly well written and well performed, flitting from subject-to-subject in rapid succession, frequently interrupting a train of thought for a completely irrelevant diversion into subjects like leg shaving or keeping stockings up.  When one girl, despite having a privileged background, spends most of her time being looked after by housekeepers while her parents are abroad, develops a full blown crush on Orient, the scene is set for a collision between the pianist and the girl's philandering snob of a mother (played by Angela Lansbury), which not only threatens to pull apart completely her family, but also the friendship between the two girls.

Despite his limited presence, The World of Henry Orient definitely has to count as one of Sellers' most effective and enjoyable films.  The movie underlines that the best way to handle Sellers' talents was to treat him more as a star character actor than a lead, keeping his appearances relatively short, but in them giving him plenty of opportunities to exercise his comedic abilities.  The fact is that he simply didn't have the charisma or presence to carry a film as a lead.  Unless he was playing an eccentric or grotesque character, he simply came over as unsympathetic, lacking empathy and not particularly likeable, (an assessment shared by some of his many ex-wives).  So, casting him as an essentially unsympathetic character whose artistic abilities and superficial sophistication and charm conceal a charmless character incapable of any deep emotional engagement with others, is actually something of a genius move, allowing him fully to play to his strengths.  Ultimately though, despite delivering a strong and memorable performance, it is the characters of the two girls, rather than that of nominal star Sellers, which linger in the memory.  Which, perhaps, is why the film isn't as well remembered as it should be, inevitably disappointing hardcore Sellers fans and probably putting off potential viewers familiar with him from some of his more dominant, but less successful, film roles. 

Broadcast Blandness

There is a certain fascination about watching live broadcasts of foreign TV channels, in part because of the knowledge that, at the same time, people thousands of miles away are watching the exact same thing.  Moreover, there's that feeling that you are watching something 'forbidden', in that you know that these networks aren't really intended for your eyes.  Lately, thanks to the magic of one of those highly dubious Roku apps I like so much, I've been taking in quite a lot of US TV.  Obviously, the time difference means that I'm seeing a lot of what, to the US East Coast, is afternoon schedules, but staying up to the early hours, I can watch prime time, but it is, nonetheless, a fascinating experience.  The nature of the app means that many of its sources are undoubtedly of dubious legality, meaning that the availability of channels can vary from day-to-day, making for a somewhat fragmented viewing experience, (most of the main networks - CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox - clearly have more secure servers and streams, as they are rarely available direct, but many of their affiliates seem to have less secure broadcast streams, particularly those in the Mid-West, making their prime time schedules regularly available).  Apart from establishing that the flagship programming on the traditional networks is even blander, less varied and formulaic than here in the UK, the thing which has interested me the most have been the commercials.  Now, foreign TV ads have long been a source of fascination for the UK, mainly because it is always interesting to see how stuff is sold in different markets, but it seems that even these are now becoming more homogenised.  A fair proportion of the ads I've seen on the main US channels this past week have actually been the exact same ads used in the UK.  The product name varies, but the ads are the same as those running in the UK.

Voltarol, for instance, is Voltaren in the US, but uses the same commercials, just with a US voiceover and the US product name.  The Sensodyne ad, you know, the one with that woman brushing her teeth, glancing into the basin and seeing blood, looking up and seeing, instead of her reflection in the bathroom mirror, that posh-sounding Sensodyne woman who lectures her on the benefits of the product, also runs on US TV.  The posh bird even still has her English accent.  The only difference is that the ad is now advertising Parodontax, a toothpaste marketed in the US by the owners of the Sensodyne brand, (they also own Voltarol/Votaren).  In addition to these, there's also a series of ads for a windscreen replacement service called Safelite, which, despite having a different name, uses the same jingle (with the company name changed, obviously) as UK windscreen replacement service Auto Glass Direct, (Presumably, both are part of the same group).   Although not identical to the UK ads, they are very similar.  There are other ads for international brands which are the same on both sides of the Atlantic, but with the actors redubbed with location appropriate accents, (they doubtless also run in other overseas, non-English speaking, markets redubbed as appropriate).  I find this convergence of commercials rather disappointing, but not surprising.  It is all part and parcel of globalisation.  As more and more of the world's trade lies in the hands of fewer and fewer multinational conglomerates, it is only logical that they should want to present the same corporate image worldwide.  Moreover, it cuts costs if you can run the same ad anywhere in the world.  A concept that extends to TV itself, with the rise of streaming giants with global presences, television stations and their output will, inevitably, become ever more homogenised across markets.  It's already happened in retail: the brands dominating high streets and malls the world over are now all pretty much the same.  Stand in the middle of a shopping mall just about anywhere in the world and - on the basis of the shops you can see - you'd be hard pressed to say exactly where you were.  Not so much global 'brandification' as global 'blandification'.

The Musk of X Sex

Recently, I've found myself going back to that post I wrote last year about Elon Musk and his apparent desire to take physical intimacy and human interaction out of sex.  Actually, that was just a sort of footnote to the post and for some reason, it has stayed with me, expanding itself in my subconscious before beginning to bubble up into my conscious thoughts.  Originally, I had briefly mooted the idea of Musk creating sex robots with which men like him could have remote sex with women, experiencing the act via a brain implant linked to the sexbot.  But why should it have to be some kind of autonomous robot (unless you really want to enact rape fantasies without fear of consequences, of course, by sending it out anonymously to have unconsenting sex with random women)?  Couldn't it be some kind of advanced exoskeleton?  A shiny metal suit which makes the wearer an unstoppable sex machine?  Except that this would be technologically advanced sex.  Techno sex, if you will, or perhaps X-sex, with each exoskeleton having, instead of genitalia, docking ports where they can literally 'couple up', with the real genitalia beneath being artificially stimulated by the suits to the point of orgasm.  The system could guarantee, for instance, that both participants could climax simultaneously, while, via those brain implants, both parties would have the option of experiencing it all from either or both perspectives.

Now, bearing in mind Musk's public proclamations on the subject, I think that we can assume that the suits will be strictly gendered, with a 'male' version sold exclusively to alpha males, featuring a telescopic (and sizeable) 'probe' which will shoot out and 'dock' with a matching socket in the groin area of the 'female' suit.  Thus, these suits could be a step toward Musk's dream of eliminating the whole idea of transgender identities.  Only biological men can obtain the 'male' suit and only biological women the 'female' suit, so that the only form of sex available will be of the heterosexual variety - and let's face it, this cyber-sex will be so fantastic that nobody will want to do it any other way, so guy-on-girl will be the only game in town.  It won't just be the transgender community excluded, either.  With the 'male' exoskeleton having no anus equivalent, gay sex will be out, while there will be no way for 'female' suits to couple up, thereby taking care of lesbianism.  Ultimately, I'm sure that Musk would see these exoskeletons merely as a step on the path to fully integrating man and machine, with the ultimate goal being human brains transplanted into metal bodies, only able to perform techno-sex.  Which would also eliminate the need for reproduction, as these new cyborgs would effectively be immortal, able to enjoy eternity as one long orgy of technologically enhanced sex. 

I'm sure, though, that eventually someone would find a way to modify the devices to make same sex cyber relations possible.  By swapping around those genital units, so that people could effectively change sex, by making a 'male' suit 'female' and vice versa, a form of techno gender reassignment.  All of which would, no doubt, drive Musk to apoplexy, with scenes of him running around smashing up modified suits with a hammer.  

War For Peace?

While some might argue that Donald Trump's apparent desperation to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize could have positive repercussions in the real world - doubtless pointing to the apparent progress in possibly ending the current conflict in Gaza - I can't help but feel that, like everything else associated with Trump, it will all end in tears.  Or simply peter out if he can't get a quick result, in which case he will simply lose interest.  I mean, just look at the war in Ukraine, having failed to end it by bullying Ukraine into effectively capitulating to Moscow, or by exploiting his supposed 'special relationship' with Putin to get the latter to the negotiating table, he seems now to have effectively walked away, as it is clear that it doesn't represent a clear path to that elusive Nobel Prize.  Likewise, if there isn't rapid progress in Gaza, probably by the Palestinian side effectively capitulating to Israel, which would seem to be the only kind of 'peace' acceptable to Netanyahu, then Trump will start casting around for another war to resolve instead.  Maybe he'll start one specially, just so that he can end it through his 'negotiating' skills.  Perhaps that's why he seems to have declared war on the American people, sending troops and masked thugs into cities that didn't vote for him, hoping that a full blown civil war might erupt, which he can then resolve.  It's a novel approach and not one that the Nobel Prize Committee would probably agree with, but I suppose that it's worth a shot.

Another approach might be to take radical action with regard to an existing conflict.  Even as we speak, one of Trump's many crackpot advisors could be explaining to him that historically, many major wars have been ended by one side completely annihilating the other.  Just look at World War Two: the Allies first bombed Germany's cities to rubble, until they surrendered, then obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs (after they'd already levelled many of their other cities using conventional bombs), to force Japan's surrender.  With such a precedent in mind, could we see Trump's next 'peace plan' consist of sending in the USAF to bomb both sides in one of the smaller scale conflicts to the negotiating table?  He could start with one of those regional wars, like the current conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rebels are allegedly being supported by neighbouring Rwanda - it shouldn't take much in the way of US military resources to bomb both countries into suing for peace.  Of course, it helps that these sorts of countries don't have nuclear weapons, so the possibility of it all going wrong and retribution against the US being carried out is pretty much non-existent.  But where such risks exist, then just bombing the weaker side into 'peace' would be a safer strategy.  So watch out Gaza and Kyiev - start negotiating with your foes now, or risk enforced US 'peace' being rained down on you from the skies.  If that still doen't get Trump the Nobel peace Prize, then perhaps he can simply bomb Stockholm, until they surrender unconditionally and award him the Nobel Prizes for Peace, Medicine, Economics, Physics and Literature.

Miscomprehending the News

I had another one of those episodes of momentary incomprehension today, which sent me off on a mental tangent before I realised that I had completely misunderstood something I'd heard.  It happened when I heard on the radio that Bari Weiss had been appointed to oversee CBS News in the States - I thought that they had said that CBS was appointing Barry Weiss.  Why are they appointing that dude from Storage Wars, was my immediate reaction.  I mean, he might know a lot by antiques, rummaging through storage containers full of junk and making suggestive comments to women young enough to be his granddaughter, but how is any of that relevant to current affairs?  Don't get me wrong, I like Barry Weiss, Storage Wars was never as good after he left, but I just didn't see the link to running a TV news division.  Eventually, of course, I realised that they were talking about somebody completely different and that this was another chapter in mainstream US media's attempts to appease Trump and his fascistic followers by appointing someone perceived as a conservative to runs its news outfit.  Because, right now, if you try to run a news service that strives for balance, then you find yourself being accused by every rabid right-wing lunatic of pushing a liberal/left-wing bias in your reporting.  Now, I'd like to say that this phenomena is unique to contemporary Trumpland, but the reality is that it is neither new, nor confined to the US.  Here in the UK, since the late nineties, TV news, particularly BBC news, has found itself under constant assault by the government of the day alleging bias of one kind or another.  In fact, it goes back even further than that.  Back in the sixties, after Harold Wilson won his first general election, I seem to recall that for some time he refused to give interviews to the BBC, on the grounds that they had consistently shown an anti-Labour bias, instead favouring ITN.

In this latter case, I'd argue that there probably was bias in the way the BBC reported politics at the time.  Not a conscious bias against Labour specifically, but a bias in favour of the establishment, the status quo.  Because, after all, the BBC, while not directly controlled by the UK government, has always been the 'national broadcaster', the 'voice of the nation', which inevitably meant that it was always going to take the establishment line, on current affairs, at least.  Of course, what constitutes 'the establishment' has changed over subsequent decades, giving successive governments room for manoeuvre when comes to accusations of bias.  All such complaints, obviously, are attempts to control the news agenda and bend the way in which events are reported to be most favourable to those in power.  Or, increasingly, those seeking power with, for instance, Reform UK seemingly having mesmerised the BBC's current chief political correspondent into putting some pretty naive analyses of the party and its leader.  But getting back to the US, you might be justified in asking, bearing in mind the plethora of insane right-wing news outlets there, all busily spewing out demented fascist propaganda, why are Trump and his cronies seemingly so obsessed with controlling the 'old' media, like CBS News?  The answer is simple - despite their proliferation and their billionaire backing, the vast majority of those crackpot outlets simply don't have much reach beyond the true devotees of the MAGA cult.  The only exception being, perhaps, Fox News.  For the average US viewer, the likes of ABC, NBC and CBS are still their main sources of news, either directly via their networks, or via their affiliates.  So long as they still exist in their current form, then an alternative interpretation of events to that of the Trumpists is available, one that allows viewers to make up their own minds about what is going on, rather than being fed the unhinged propaganda of the right.

But, you know, I've warmed to the idea of Barry Weiss becoming head of CBS news.   On Storage Wars he always seemed a pretty OK guy who didn't himself (let alone the show) too seriously.  Maybe that's the approach that's needed with US news coverage - a reassurance that surely this madness can't continue indefinitely and for now we should take it all with a pinch of salt while appreciating the sheer absurdity of it all.

Stigma (1972)

While the trailer for Stigma (1972) makes it pretty clear what the film is about, this isn't immediately obvious if, like me, you come to the film cold.  At first, it looks like it might be some kind of urban-set Blaxploitation movie, with its central character released from jail and hanging out in a sleazy dive bar, full of stereotypical hookers, pimps and homosexuals.  But this is abruptly left behind, as next thing, our hero is on a rural road hitch-hiking, with little success, before teaming up with a fellow hiker, a recently demobbed white Vietnam vet, discovering that they are both heading for the same destination - a remote island off of the California coast.  We also finally get a bit of backstory for our lead character, learning that he is a doctor who served a prison sentence for performing an illegal abortion, but has now been offered a job by a former mentor, to work as his assistant on the island.  Still, though, the film's focus hasn't been made clear.  Arriving on the island and finding himself the only black person in a community of insular and suspicious islanders, it looks like we might be heading for a drama about racial prejudice.  There is, however, another twist when he finds his mentor dead of a heart attack at his home, with the viewer left wondering whether the hostile redneck sheriff will wrongly accuse our guy of murder.  But as he investigates his mentor's most recent work, the true situation becomes clearer - there is evidence of a strain of syphilis running rampant through the island's younger population.

Stigma then settles into being a medical thriller, with the new doctor racing against time to convince the islanders of the severity of the situation in the face of hostility and denial on the part of the sheriff and other leading citizens.  His search for the origins of the outbreak take us through a series of colourful interludes, including testing the women at the local out-of-town brothel, which results in a violent confrontation with some local heavies and a trip to the old lighthouse, which, it turns out, is the site of constant 'love ins' by the local youth.  Finally, wrongly accused of rape by the sheriff's daughter (who, it turns out, is the source of the infection), it all culminates with a confrontation between doctor and sheriff at the lighthouse.  Stigma is one of those unexpected films, drawing in its audience by misleading them into thinking that they might be watching a Blaxploitation piece, but subsequently ambushing them with a tale about the perils of venereal disease.  It's actually quite effective as a thriller, keeping up a decent pace and providing a degree of tension, action and character conflict.  It's biggest weakness is a tendency to descend into preachiness every so often, as we find ourselves treated to lectures on safe sex.  Although even this has a certain novelty value, bearing in mind that the film was released in the early seventies when such subject matter was usually confined to public information films rather than forming the core plot of a faux Blaxploitation movie.

On a technical level, the film, despite a low budget, is very well made, with an authentically gritty feel, with its location shooting giving a realistic edge to proceedings.  The island setting lends the whole affair a claustrophobic feel, despite the proliferation of outdoor locations, while simultaneously emphasising the protagonist's personal isolation as an obvious outsider in a tight-knit community.   While many of the characters are stereotypes, (cheerful madam, happy hookers and redneck sheriff, for instance), the cast are generally pretty decent, although the closest thing to a star is Philip Michael Thomas as the lead, in his first starring role.  David E Durston's direction moves things along at a decent pace, with the rural setting reminiscent of his best known film, I Drink Your Blood (1971), but with a less bloodthirsty scenario.  Overall, Stigma is an enjoyable, but rather curious, attempt to use an exploitation format to highlight a serious public health issue.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

I remember that back in the day, when computers still had novelty value and just to interact with them in the most basic of ways, you had to learn a programming language, there was a saying: 'Garbage in, garbage out'.  In other words, their output could only be as effective as the program you had inputted.  Mistakes in the code, or just downright poor coding would give you poor results.  The same, of course, is true of people - feed them a diet of false information and they'll harbour a false world view.  Propagandists know that well, which is why they make out sure that the media is full of their soundbites and stories which promote a slanted, out-of-context view of events, in order to try and give their world view hegemony in the public consciousness.  In recent times, the situation has become even worse, with those seeking to spread their dubious views now able to bypass the conventional media altogether, instead spewing out an endless stream of videos and clips on You Tube and TikTok pushing the crudest of hate-mongering - clearly directed at the young and impressionable.  But Hell, we know all this - I seem to have written about it endlessly - to little effect, obviously.  Now, of course, a new front has opened up with the advent of AI, which also is prone to spewing out misleading information, presented as facts and worse, it allows people to create realistic looking fake pictures and videos to try and discredit opponents and mislead voters.

Because, of course, that same maxim of 'Garbage in, garbage out' also applies to AI - no matter how much information a given system (illegally) scrapes from the web, if the sources it is using are bad, then it can only output bad answers.  Just look at Elon Musk's attempt at AI: Grok.  Informed, it seems, by what it reads on Twitter, which, under Musk, has become a cess pool of right-wing bigotry, racism, misogyny, transphobia and just about any other phobia you can think of, it spews forth 'answers' which reflect the general ill-informed  ignorance generally to be found there.  That, combined with apparent interference from Musk to ensure that his AI also reflects his own crackpot prejudices and you have a potentially very dangerous piece of technology.  But the 'Garbage in, garbage out' maxim also gives an opportunity to those of us who produce content to actively undermine AI systems and expose their limitations.  I'm well aware that my content here and on The Sleaze gets scraped by AI bots, which has motivated me to make out sure that I put out as much bizarre and utterly misleading stuff as I can.  I've made it my mission to try and ensure that the likes of ChatGPT start telling people that Boris Johnson was the 'Balham Buggerer', that London has been haunted by 'Flame Arsed Jack', a terrifying ghoul that lights its own farts or that Trump, clad only in soiled underpants, jumped out of a giant cake at Jeffrey Epstein's birthday party.  So, I urge everyone currently turning out content on 'little sites' like mine, I'd urge you to follow this example.  People have a tendency to perceive these AIs as somehow being 'neutral' or 'objective' arbiters of knowledge.  But they aren't: they are as prone to bias and prejudice as real humans.  But, if we can get them all to regurgitate our false information as if it were true, then maybe, just maybe, we can slow down their encroachment into everyday human activity and alter perceptions of them.  Either that, or we'll warp the minds of generations of the human race for decades to come.