The Wrong Sort of Films?

Sometimes I worry that the kind of films I enjoy more than slightly undermine that veneer of sophisticated intellectualism that I like to project, revealing me instead as a rather shallow thrill-seeker.  Instant gratification, some might say, is the underlying theme in my cinematic tastes, whether that be in the form of a shot of furious action or a wallow in some sleazy exploitation.  It's not that I don't watch and enjoy other types of films:  I watch a lot of those continental films with subtitles - and not just the Italian ones with the gore and nudity or the French ones with Belmondo as a rogue cop beating up suspects and driving fast cars, or Delon as a charismatic criminal for whom women tear their clothes off at first sight.  No, indeed, I've watched my share of art movies and serious dramas.  All of this came to mind when, the other day, I sat down to watch Quest for Fire, the supposed intellectual and historically and anthropologically correct riposte to all those sixties and seventies caveman movies featuring the likes of Raquel Welch wearing fur bikinis.  You know the one - it was much vaunted sat the time as the cavemen all spokes 'languages' devised by Desmond Morris.  But that fact alone underlined one of the film's problems - if the language is unintelligible to modern ears and there are no subtitles, then what, really, is the difference between that and all the grunting that passes for dialogue in films like When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)?

One of the selling points of Quest for Fire was that the prehistoric environment it depicted was far more accurate than that depicted in earlier films: no dinosaurs anachronistically interacting with cavemen, it aimed only to depict the real fauna of the era.  Except that it didn't.  In fact, apart from the primitive humans, the fauna was a bit thin on the ground.  Sure, we got some circus elephants in fur coats pretending to be mammoths (much in the manner of 1940's One Million BC) and some supposed sabre-toothed cats.  Except that the latter were just lions with false teeth, whereas, real sabre-tooths were actually a completely separate branch of the cat family from modern day big cats, with extremely powerful shoulder and jaw muscles to best use those long teeth and short tails.  Moreover, sabre-toothed cats were found in the Americas, while the film seems to be set in Europe (although the habitats the cavemen travel through in their titular quest seem to range from Scotland to Africa - a heck of a journey for cavemen on foot, luckily, their tribe hasn't moved from the spot they last saw them at, despite a quest that must have lasted months, at least).  But Hell, Quest for Fire is very worthy in its intent, with every frame screaming 'Look, this is a serious film'.  Nonetheless, Philistine that I am, I kept hoping for a dinosaur or two to turn up and liven up the action.  I mean, it's very well made and does boast of featuring Rae Dawn Chong clad only in body paint for her entire performance, but if any film was ever in need of a girl in a fur bikini being carried off by a pterodactyl, it's Quest for Fire.  I'm sorry, I know that it marks me out as some kind of pleb, but really, I like my movie viewing to include something at least resembling action and excitement.

The Disappointing Truth

They always disappoint, don't they?  The 'big reveals' in scandals and long-running news stories, that is.  The media always builds this stuff up, teasing the prospect of future revelations, while dropping salacious scraps of inconclusive information, giving the impression that this is all leading up to some kind of spectacular denouement.  Like a TV soap opera, or a thriller movie.  And, of course, we lap it all up, just as we do those TV shows and films, buying in to all the drama along the way as a substitute for the excitement that is missing in our own real lives.  But in these long-running news scandals, just like in real life, we never seem to get the big pay off.  Instead, it all seems to fizzle out disappointingly.  Take the Epstein scandal - we've had yet more documents released today, following years of hints and teasing from both Trump and his opponents as to who is going to get burned by the inevitable breaking of the scandal when everything comes out.  Yet, in truth, despite all the stuff released, all the pictures and e-mails, that smoking gun never seems to appear.  The 'Holy Grail' of evidence which will point the finger at Trump, or anyone else for that matter, stubbornly refuses to materialise.  Everything is circumstantial.  The only major casualty so far has been the former Prince Andrew and even there the evidence is pretty much circumstantial.  Certainly nothing sufficiently concrete to warrant criminal investigations - his downfall has purely been the result of the reputational damage his association with Epstein has caused the Royal Family.

But such is the nature of this sort of stuff - it isn't just confined to political scandals like the Epstein business.  The media loves to push those narratives about how the US government has access to alien technology from crashed UFOs, or that the UK government has reams of files devoted to UFO incursions into British airspace, which it  suppressed to prevent public panic.  With each story they hint that astounding revelations are about to break: that dead aliens are about to be revealed, that files are going to be released showing that Harold Wilson held meetings with aliens in 1968 or that the US will roll a complete flying saucer out of the hangers at Area 51.  Yet all we get are the same tired old stories from the same tired old cranks about how they met a man from Rigel while working in a top secret US lab, or how they were taken on a ride around Mars in an alien spaceship - all with absolutely no evidence to back them up.  The big pay off just never comes.  Because, the cynic in me says, if it ever did, then the story would effectively be dead.  Sure, there would be plenty of stuff about how the aliens are getting a State Visit and meeting the King at Buckingham Palace, but that would draw them into the world of the ordinary, making them concrete presences, rather than some tantalising, shadowy mystery which sells papers.  Because that's the draw of these things - the mystery.  All mysteries, when solved, are somewhat disappointing.  In contrast to fiction, for instance, murders are inevitably motivated by greed, jealousy, passion or are heat of the moment incidents, the result of rage, drugs or alcohol.  Or some combination of the three.  Either that, or they are the work of a psychopath who, in contrast to movie psychos, has unfathomable motives and looks more like a mumbling tramp than a sophisticated professional like Hannibal Lecter.  As with everything else, the fantastic fantasy versions are always far more exciting and interesting than the mundane reality.  Which is probably why so many people seem to like conspiracy theories.  But that's a whole other post... 

Even AI's Gone Commie!

The insanity of the Daily Mail continues apace - it is now complaining that AI Chatbots have a 'left-wing' bias, because their answers to queries allegedly source 'left wing' sources 'like The Guardian and the BBC'.  This is so problematic on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to start with responding to it.  Let's start with their definition of 'left wing sources'.  Clearly, the BBC isn't a left wing source - it aims for political neutrality (and in reality tends to present an 'establishment' perspective on the vents).  But to the increasingly rabid Mail, (the newspaper that, in the thirties, once had Hitler as its 'Man of the Year'), 'neutral' is apparently the same as 'left wing'.  As for The Guardian, well, it certainly sits to the left of centre, but it certainly doesn't consistently articulate any ideological or doctrinaire left wing perspective.  It's well-meaning liberalism for the well intentioned but ineffective.  (I should know - I read it every day).  The biggest problem with this story is that it doesn't explain just how sources are attributed, or what the queries used in the data were about.  Now, I'm sure that the original report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) that the article draws on (and undoubtedly misquotes and misrepresents in order to fit the newspaper's own biases), probably does provide clarity on these matters, but the fact is that more people will read the Mail article than the report, so that has to be the basis of my analysis.

I'd hazard a guess that many of the queries involved probably have little to do with politics and it simply happens that the BBC and Guardian can provide more relevant information to the AI algorithms.  Moreover, on issues like the environment and climate change, say, they are far more likely to provide information in line with accepted scientific opinion than right wing sources like the Mail, who are far more likely to give credence to climate change deniers.  Indeed, I'd say that a large part of the reason for AI's use of non right-wing sources is because, in the UK at least, their 'journalism' rarely has a sound factual basis, instead being based upon bigotry, bias and deliberate misinterpretation of actual facts.  No wonder AI algorithms filter them out.  Obviously, though, the underlying problem with the story is its rank hypocrisy - a newspaper with and an increasingly extremer right-wing bias, (a lot of its output these days reads like agitprop for the likes of Farage), complaining that another source of news has a different bias.  Bearing in mind that the UK's print media is overwhelmingly owned by wealthy right-wingers, who use it to try and indoctrinate readers to their selfish agendas in order to try and influence elections, surely having a rival source of information which leans the other way can only be health?  Surely it would create balance in the news sphere?  But alternative viewpoints are simply not allowed in the world of the crackpot right.  Such things are dangerous.  They might encourage people to think for themselves - and we can't have that, can we?

Two Lost Worlds (1951)

An independently produced low-budget adventure film whose action sequences consist of footage from other films, Two Lost Worlds (1951) is a head-scratching experience for the viewer.  If you were to believe the poster and the above trailer, you might well be left thinking that this was going to be a full-blown 'lost world' picture, with the characters encountering all manner of prehistoric life after being shipwrecked on a remote island.  In reality, this part of the story is crammed into the last reel of a film which runs barely over sixty minutes and feels decidedly tacked on to what is otherwise a sea-going adventure story involving clipper ships and pirates.  In between these in sandwiched a romance.  The dinosaur sequences, (followed by the inevitable volcanic eruption that ensures all trace of the lost world is eradicated) feel jarring, as if they were an afterthought to try to both pad out the running-time and provide more box-office draw.

As noted, the main action sequences are all stock footage taken from other movies, with the pirate sequences coming mainly from 1940's Captain Caution, some of the 'Australian' sequences (the whole film was shot in California) use footage from Captain Fury, while the dinosaur fight and the volcanic eruption are the same ubiquitous footage from One Million BC (1940) that found its way into countless low-budget movies of the era.  Thanks to its meandering plot, the film never really builds up any pace, nor does it feel especially cohesive as a story, with each episode so brief as to feel perfunctory.  For contemporary audiences, the most recognisable actor is leading man James Arness (or Jim Arness as he's billed), who would appear in the somewhat more substantive science fiction classic The Thing From Another World that same year.  Director Norman Dawn had a career that stretched back to the silent era and had been something of a pioneer in developing the use of travelling mattes and was the first director to have used back projection - which is probably why the over-familiar battling dinosaurs footage is better integrated with actors from the film it is inserted into than usual.

Artificial Hate

Bloody AI.  It's taking over everything.  Even right-wing extremism, it seems.  I was reading today about this racist, extreme-right meme 'sweeping' the internet, which involves an AI generated Goth girl extolling the virtues of good old 'British Values' - enslaving black people, suppressing workers' rights and telling Johnny Foreigner where to get off, for instance - and having racist encounters with bearded AI Muslim stereotypes.  Should the likes of Nigel Farage and 'Tommy Robinson' feel threatened?  Is AI the future of right-wing extremism?   I mean, why listen to the demented rantings of a failed commodities broker or a convicted mortgage fraudster and football thug, when you can instead have as your figurehead an AI generated fascist who carries no past baggage of criminal convictions or dodgy City dealings?  For one thing, they can be far more physically attractive than either frog faced Farage or short arse Robinson, (it's apparently a rule that British fascists have to not only be stupid, but also ugly as sin).  Plus, if they do start spouting awful racist insults at minorities, they have the automatic defence that they aren't real, so can't really be racist, can they?  It's all just a glitch in the algorithm rather than evidence of deep seated irrational bigotry and hatred.  Arguably, they would also be more efficient than any flesh and blood neo Nazi leader: able to do their own fact checks before they speak, able to properly research their bigotry and able to phrase it subtly enough that it doesn't ostensibly sound racist, let alone be legally actionable.

This hypothetical new AI leader of the British extreme right could also star in their own propaganda videos which look far better and classier than anything Reform UK could produce.  They could be seen participating in the crusades, for instance, single handedly fighting off hordes of Saracens, before the scene morphs into one of them single handedly turning back hundreds of immigrants (who look just like those marauding Saracens) landing on a British beach in an Armada of rubber boats.  Or maybe they could be shown flying their Spitfire in defence of Britain, but not against the Luftwaffe, but instead against planes with crescents on their wings and tails, all flown by swarthy looking bearded devils, cackling evilly as they drop bombs on innocent British citizens.  I really think that Farage, Robinson and their ilk could find themselves under threat from AI.  How long can it be before some whacked out crypto-fascist tech billionaire decides to bypass buffoons like those two and instead create the sort of AI extreme right leader I've described and set them up as the figurehead of a new British extreme right, backed by their billions?  Quite frankly, the only hope for Farage et al lies in them creating their own AI avatars to represent them - an idealised digital Farage who isn't as utterly repugnant as the real one and who can put their arguments over slickly and plausibly, rather than coming over as a grubby money grabbing shill.  The AI revolution is coming and these guys need to get aboard or be swept aside by a new generation of digital fascists!  

Manifesting the End of Civilisation?

If you were to take everything in the UK's right-wing media at face value, then you'd think that we were living in some kind of third world Hell hole, with a collapsing economy, crumbling infrastructure, and drug-ravaged cities overrun by violent, mostly foreign, criminals.  Either that, or you'd think that we were living in some kind of police state, with your right to hurl racist insults in the name of free speech, being severely curtailed by a dictatorial government led by the reincarnation of Josef Stalin.  Yet, step outside of your front door and it all looks very different.  In fact, it all looks much the same as it has for the past few decades.  People aren't being murdered in their beds on an hourly basis, women aren't being raped in broad daylight in shopping centres by foreign infidels and people aren't offering you drugs on every street corner.  Hospitals, courts, schools etc still function, buses and trains still run (albeit usually late, but what's new?) and the bins are still collected (except maybe in Birmingham, where the council is apparently still in dispute with its own refuse collectors).  Certainly, prices are up, (but inflation is historically something of a national institution in the UK), much of the public sector is badly underfunded, but still functions, crimes still occur and the police are as ineffective as ever, but none of this is indicative of the sort of end-of-civilisation scenario painted by the press.  Most of it is the result of government policies - primarily the economic mismanagement of fourteen years of Tory governments and the disaster of Brexit, which has undermined the UK's economy.  Of course, if there was still a Tory government in office, all of these things could be happening, but the right-wing media wouldn't be framing it the same way.  

No, it would all be the fault of the victims, be they the unemployed, the poor, immigrants, single mothers, the disabled, or whoever, not the government.  But as we have a Labour government in office, it is instead all evidence of an impending apocalypse brought about by the government's determination to punish the Daily Mail reading middle classes by flooding the country with murderous immigrants, cutting public services and turning the police into the Gestapo, unreasonably expecting them to enforce the law, particularly traffic law and public order laws, regardless of whether you are middle class or not!  Such laws are only for the horrible working classes!  So day in, day out, they print their hysterical headlines about how 'Asylum seekers ate my Granny' or 'My daughter was raped by a coke crazed one-legged transsexual benefits claimant wearing a turban', seemingly in the hope that if they keep imposing their false vision of the state of the UK on the public then maybe they can actually force its physical manifestation.  At the very least, the hope to be able to create a false perception in the minds of the public.  What can we do to counter this propaganda war aimed at creating sort of new reality which will have people running into the arms of Nigel Farage for protection, (although why anyone would think that some drunken old racist could protect them from armies of homicidal foreign brigands is beyond me)?  Obviously, it's pointless trying to create an alternative, competing, vision, with most of the media in the hands of wealthy right-wing bastards.  

What the government should do, I think, is to employ some of those Tibetan monks.  You know, the Buddhist ones who, through intense mental training can, through meditation, manifest Tulpas, unreal beings who have the appearance and substance of real humans.  Because, surely, if they can individually do that, then surelt, en masse, they could manifest a whole new reality.  Just to make out sure, they could get them to train groups of Labour staffers in the meditation technique, so that they can reinforce the projection of this new reality.  The fact is that they wouldn't have to create this reality in all of its detail, just create a thought form version of it so powerful, that it can supplant the Daily Hate inspred version from the public's minds.  It wouldn't even have to be some kind of projection of a false paradise, just a powerful projection of how things really are.  OK, I know it all sounds utterly fantastical, but Hell, we're living in an age where Donald Trump is US President, imposing fascism on his country and trying to buy or steal Greenland, so, to be frank, anything must be possible!

Cognitive Dissonance

Get those ear goggles back on and tune into another selection of unlikely news stories culled from the archives of The Sleaze.

This time around, the American Mid-West reels as Trump breaks wind in Milwaukee - according to early reports, the casualties could be high.  Back on the West Coast, Trump's tariffs come home to roost as Japan sends its Kaiju to destroy Los Angeles - can giant clones of Trump, Vance and Hegseth see them off?  Action Business News is on the scene.

We also explore toxic masculinity, from insecure influencers to stealth phones that can undress women.

Plus, has Dr Who gone too gay?  Our correspondents discuss the true sexual imagery of the long-running BBC science fiction series, while we also hear a strange reminiscence about a lost Dr Who story the BBC feared could have caused a major schism with the Vatican.

Not to forget Peter Lorre's amazing erectile dysfunction cure.

Listen here:  Cognitive Dissonance. 

So, get those ear goggles on, sit back and let that wholesome sleaze wash over you!

Written and produced by Doc Sleaze.

 

The Dark (1993)

The Dark has proven to be a popular title for horror films, with the 1979 film of that title possibly the best known.  This, however, is the 1993 movie of the same name - not a remake, but a completely different film.  1993's The Dark is a low budget monster movie that makes the most of its limited resources to create a surprisingly effective, not to mention quite amiable, viewing experience.  Most of the action takes place around a graveyard at night, where something is lurking beneath the surface but which, itself, is being hunted by various parties.  These central graveyard sequences form the backbone of the plot and are filmed in a manner reminiscent of older B horror movies like Macabre or I Bury the Living, both of which featured similar settings, with tombstones poking out of the earth like rotting teeth and pervaded by an unnerving stillness and silence.  With its burrowing menace pulling down headstones and leaving gaping holes in the fabric of the graveyard, much of the film's action ultimately devolves into chases through the tunnels it leaves.  Again, these are very well handled, with the film summoning up a dank, claustrophobic atmosphere for these scenes.  

The film builds up to this climactic monster hunt in an agreeably elliptical manner, with the opening throwing the viewer into the middle of some graveyard action, with the main character, scientist Gary 'Hunter' Henderson, finding himself inadvertently caught up in two FBI agents' encounter with a monstrous 'something', while paying a nocturnal visit to his wife's grave.  We then move to an encounter at a police station between the surviving agent and Henderson - who reveals that his gunshot wound has already healed - which culminates in the agent violently warning Henderson off from investigating the unspecified threat.  After which, we flash forward two years for Henderson's encounter with some bikers in a cafe, making his escape on a motorcycle with a plucky waitress, while also being introduced to the two groundskeepers at that cemetery, who find themselves forced to dig a grave the old-fashioned way due to an equipment failure.  Inevitably, the encounter the monster's tunnels, call in a couple of deputies, before Henderson, the waitress and the now ex-FBI agent all turn up in search of that creature.  

All of which leaves the viewer feeling that they've walked into the middle of a movie, somehow having missed the exposition scenes which might explain it all.  (Which is no bad thing - films which lay everything out in detail too early can be terribly predictable and dull).  This confusion, however, is somewhat ameliorated by a scene in a motel bedroom between Henderson and the waitress, where she looks at his notes and gleans that the creature is a prehistoric survival, a kind of giant rat, which secretes a substance with incredible healing properties, (which is how Henderson recovers from his wounds so quickly).  Henderson is after it for scientific study and the ex-FBI man for revenge for his slain partner (and the possibility of making some money from the dead beast).  It's the barest of outlines for what's going on, but it's more than sufficient and credits the viewer with enough imagination and intelligence to fill in the blanks for themselves.

The film's limitations, in terms of resources, are most apparent in its monster, which is somewhat rubbery looking.  That said, I've seen a lot worse in much bigger budgeted films - The Dark's creature is at least not too obviously a man in a suit, featuring some relatively (bearing in mind the budget) sophisticated animatronic effects for close ups of the head.  By keeping it underground and poorly lit, the film succeeds in making the creature surprisingly effective.  Moreover, for once it isn't a creature driven by some kind of bloodlust - it actually eats the dead, (hence its predilection for graveyards and ensuring plenty of scenes involving musty crypts, rotting coffins and decaying corpses), killing only when it feels threatened.  While the film is both atmospheric and suspenseful, what really lifts it above the average in terms of B-monster movies are a decent script which provides its characters with some witty and amusing dialogue - not to mention a relatively original idea for its main plot mechanism in the healing abilities of the beast's secretions - and an excellent cast who pitch their performances at exactly the right level for this type of film.  Stephen McHattie is, as usual, excellent as the two-fisted, leather jacket wearing and motorcycle riding scientist, convincing both in action sequences and in the role of intellectual scientist.  Moreover, despite the obvious age difference between him and his love interest, the waitress, he never comes over as creepy or predatory.  Equally good is Brion James as the FBI agent, bringing all of customary menace, brutality and underlying madness to the role.  Despite his screen time being limited, James gives a memorable performance.  

The film also features Jamie Woolvett, who around the same time also co-starred with Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, as the younger of the two groundskeepers, whose commentary on the poor judgement of the deputy who elects to explore the tunnels just as night is falling, provides an enjoyably self-reflexive moment in the film.  His love interest is the other deputy, played by Neve Campbell in her film debut.  Campbell, along with Cynthia Belliveau as the waitress, ensures that the film features, unusually for this genre, strong female characters who don't spend the film being victims, instead proving competent and capable monster-hunters in their own right.  A Canadian production, The Dark was directed by Craig Pryce - who is still working today, mainly in TV - who moves things along at a decent pace and handles action, suspense and dialogue scenes with equal aplomb, creating an atmospheric film that never outstays its welcome.  The Dark really deserves to be far better known, having everything required to make a cult movie and is well worth tracking down.  Hell, simply the fact that it stars both Stephen McHattie and Brion James should make you want to watch it!

Not Feeding the Copyright Trolls

The shit show just goes on, doesn't it?  You know, when I first saw Trump's text to the Norwegian PM reproduced in a post on Bluesky, I genuinely thought that it was some kind of satirical parody.  But no, it was real.  We really should be terrified, actually, that the person who wrote something that sounds like the whinings of a petulant five year old, is President of the United States and has his finger on that button.  But that isn't what I wanted to write about today.  After all, since the New Year, all I've seemed to do is write about this crazy right-wing extremist shit that's engulfing our lives.  'Remember how that guy used to post about weird movies and stuff - now it's all just political shit,' I hear people say.  (Presupposing that anybody actually does read any of this).  Yeah, well, I'm afraid that, for various reasons, I haven't been indulging in the low budget exploitation stuff as much as usual of late.  For one thing, access to a number of new apps and channels via Roku has given me the opportunity to catch up with some more recent films that have passed me by, (although I now have a couple of apps giving me access to a significant number of seventies Italian exploitation films with either sub-titles or English dubs).  For another, I've been doing all sorts of grown-up things (not before time, many who know me, might say), including some long-delayed (not to mention expensive) dental work, trying to set in motion some major home improvements and sorting out my finances, (I now have investments).  But all of that isn't what I wanted to write about today.  No, I'd actually like to look again at the whole issue of copyright trolls.

A few years ago I had a brush with a band of these brigands - basically, they troll the web looking for instances of supposedly copyrighted images being used without a licence, then try to extort money from site-owners under vague threats of legal consequences.  Whether they actually do own the rights in question, or represent the real rights owners is highly questionable. (Before they moved onto images, these sorts of shady operators used to do the same regarding music used in You Tube videos - I, personally, had several instances of them trying to claim copyright on either public domain music or music that I had the rights owner's permission to use.  Curiously, in the latter instances, the rights holders had no knowledge of these companies, never having engaged them to enforce their music rights).  Often the image in question is actually in the public domain, but has been included in commercial image libraries which, of course, doesn't change its status as public domain, but that doesn't stop these trolls from trying it on.  They don't care if the site in question is run by a charity, non-profit or just a personal blog.  They'll try to extort money with menaces, regardless.  My previous encounter with one of these organisations, (a German-based one), involved them e-mailing 'The Sleaze'  (their first mistake, there is no such person or entity, it's just a site name), claiming I was using one of their client's images unlicenced and demanding money,  Their next mistake was that the link they provided was to a page on The Sleaze, but not one that used the image in question.  Anyway, I ignored the e-mail, suspecting a scam and, to be safe, deleted most of the images from the site's library and replaced them with images I knew were public domain or royalty free, just to be on the safe side.  They subsequently sent another menacing e-mail, but this time demanding a lesser amount of money.  Which just confirmed that it was a desperate scam.

I was put in mind of all this again this past weekend, when I found from my traffic logs that a visitor from another of these outfits had trawled through a large number of pages on The Sleaze.  Obviously, they were out of luck as all of the images are now royalty-free or created, by me, specifically for use on the site using AI tools.  When checking out the offending company, I came across the usual slew of disparaging reviews and sites offering to give advice on how to deal with these bozos.  Much of which is simply wrong.  The thing to remember is that, technically, their activities are legal, if unethical in their execution.  If you use copyrighted material, whether deliberately or accidentally, through ignorance of its status or the law itself, then you are liable and the legitimate rights holders could seek financial recompense.  That said, the usual first step would be to issue a desist notice asking you to remove any such material which, if you comply, would usually be an end to the matter, especially if you also offered an apology.  The reality is that, in most of these cases of the inadvertent use of copyrighted material, the costs of litigation for the licence holder would far outweigh any compensation they received.  Formal legal action and demands for recompense are usually confined to cases where the offender persists despite requests to stop, or is obviously making money from exploiting the copyrighted material or is using it to mislead, where higher payouts would be expected.  That said, such action would normally take place via the civil courts and in the jurisdiction where the offender resides and operates.  So, if you are in the UK and the entity threatening you is in, say, Germany, then it is highly unlikely that they'll be able to follow up on their threats, (particularly if they don't know your real name and address - another reason I jealously guard such information while operating online).  So, the best advice is simply to ignore any of these e-mails if you receive them.  Just delete the offending image and check any other image you are using for copyright.

But not everyone gives such advice.  Alongside this growth industry of online copyright enforces, a parallel industry of 'law firms' offering to defend you in such cases have sprung up.  Not surprisingly, they urge you not to ignore the predatory e-mails and instead contact them.  Beware such outfits, they seem to be just as shady as the copyright trolls - they'll bleed you dry just as surely as the trolls will, given the chance.  In the first instance, if you are a small site owner, particularly if it is a non-profit hobby site or personal blog, ignore the e-mails.  Remember, in the unlikely event that it does escalate, you can always say that their e-mails went into your spam folder and that you never saw them!  They can't disprove it.  If, like me, you use royalty free and custom made AI images, then I'd suggest adding a disclaimer somewhere on your site stating this.  I've done so on The Sleaze's 'About' page, where I make clear that any attempt to claim copyright on such images or demand money for their use will be regarded as extortion and dealt with through the appropriate legal channels.  As I've found that these trolls tend to look at such disclaimers, it effectively serves as a shot across their bows.  Remember, they're looking for easy pickings, if they think you might fight back, they'll likely move onto what they think are softer targets.

This has been a public service announcement on behalf of Doc Sleaze and small site owners everywhere! 

Time Travelling Crackpots

So, Charlie Kirk was some kind of time travelling Messiah, sent to our time to ensure that the 'right' timeline came to pass. but he was 'monitored' constantly by 'agents' of dark forces.  No, that's not an outline for another satirical piece for The Sleaze, nor the plot of a forthcoming Christian graphic novel (soon to be a major film), but the is actually the latest whack-a-doodle Kirk-conspiracy theory put out there by right-wing agitator and Trump cheerleader Candace Owens.  Apparently, this particular piece of insanity has been a bridge too far for many of the extreme right loons who follow her - they could, it seems, buy all her schtick about Kirk's widow conspiring against him, so that she could take over his neo-Nazi 'Christian' Hitler Youth style movement, but him being from the future was just too mind-blowing even for them.  Which is saying something, bearing in mind that these are basically the self same nutters who bought into all that QAnon crap and seemed to believe that pizza parlours were fronts for high level peadophiles (and Satanic child sacrifices), or that furniture catalogue listings for office equipment were actually code for child trafficking.  (That's right, you ordered a filing cabinet and instead received a pre-pubescent girl sex slave - which could be quite a shock if all you wanted was somewhere to store your paperwork).  

I suppose that we should be thankful that at least some of these fruitcakes are finally beginning to recognise that the people they have been listening to and allowing to shape their opinions are actually crackpots - those that aren't morally bankrupt, grifters or just plain evil, that is.  Unfortunately, there still seem to be a lot of Americans out there still willing to support a president who, if I'm to be charitable, is certifiably insane, or if I'm not, a senile old fool.  But hey, should we expect anything less from a people who elected a rapist as president (for the second time)?  And no, the rapist comment isn't gratuitous, it illuminates his foreign policy - is it any wonder that a man who doesn't understand the concept of 'No means no' with regard to women, doesn't understand it with regard to the territory of sovereign nations?  ('I just need to grab Greenland by the pussy').  But getting back to the original point, I do find it extremely concerning that so many people seem to be willing to believe this sort of crackpottery and to use these charlatans as their primary source of information rather than more reputable news sources.  In the UK, a lot of it, I'm convinced, is down to poor education, with the Tories spending the better part of fourteen years ensuring that the education sector does anything but teach students critical thinking skills.  In the US, a lot of it, I suspect, is parochialism, with many, many people having no apparent interest in anything going on outside of their state borders, let alone their national borders.  Consequently, they have little idea of the bigger international picture and the fact that, in today's world, isolationism really isn't an option. 

 But many of them, (including well-educated yanks of my acquaintance), never seem to read a newspaper or watch a TV news broadcast, preferring instead to get their information from online sources of dubious provenance.  Their defence is that you just can't trust that mainstream media which has its own agenda and biases, etc.  Which is true, to some extent, but easily countered by gleaning your daily news intake from a variety of news sources with differing perspectives and political affiliations.  I've found that the internet makes this very easy to do - I generally look over news aggregators like the MSN homepage when I open my browser and subsequently get a pretty good and balanced overview of what's going on in the world.  But apparently, those crackpot sites and pure propaganda outlets they seem to favour are easier to read.  Probably because they don't ask you to think about what they are saying, offering no nuance or dissenting opinions and presenting as fact what are actually either speculation or the rantings of some highly dubious crank.  Who wants the boring truth when you can get fantastic lies, like Charlie Kirk being a time traveller?