Rage Against the Typography

Those who didn't die Those who didn't die Those who didn't
die Those who didn't die Those who didn't die Those who
didn't die Those who didn't die Those who didn't die Those
who didn't die Those who didn't die Those who didn't die
Those who didn't die Those who didn't die Those who didn't
die Those who didn't die Those who didn't die Those who didn't

Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died
Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died
Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died
Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died
Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died
Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died

Rage Against the Venn Diagram

An Electric Goose oldie
And these are, of course, very good...

"Suddenly, it's on barren land..."

Thinking of getting someone a goat this Christmas? Karl Pilkington has some thoughts (couldn't be bothered to read Virginia Ironside's Mail piece, but here it is):



Oh, look, I sort of blogged about the goat issue THREE YEARS AGO. Time: it flies.

And finally... Minehead

(For MBV's ATP, though, so I still win.)

Then, Hamburg!

First, Venice!

Walking wounded

Fascinating stuff from David The Wire Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which I've been blazing through recently like the bookhound I once was (Wolf Hall, you tore apart my averages and gobbled up my confidence):

The distortion of television and popular culture is nowhere more apparent than in the intimate relationship of bullets and bodies. Hollywood tells us that a Saturday Night Special can put a man on the pavement, yet ballistics experts know that no bullet short of an artillery shell is capable of knocking a human being off his feet...

Although the popular belief that many people fall down upon being shot is generally accurate, experts have determined that this occurs not for physiological reasons, but as a learned response. People who have been shot believe they are supposed to fall immediately to the ground, so they do. Proof of the phenomenon is evident in its opposite: There are countless cases in which people - often people whose mental processes are impaired by drugs or alcohol - are shot repeatedly, sustaining lethal wounds; yet despite the severity of their injuries, they continue to flee or resist for long periods of time.

(Don't worry, mum, I'm not about to go and shoot up the high school.)

What's in the lunchbox?

Apart from the time one of the entrepreneurs from Dragon's Den personally delivered a customisable voodoo doll to my office, I haven't really had that many nutty free promotional gifts (although a colleague did once receive these in the post). On Tuesday night, though, at a screening of the Sci Fi Channel's upcoming US import, V, I became one weird object richer.

The lunchboxes, lined up in shiny rows like Stormtroopers as a trio of grinning PR people looked on, were really light; I assumed they would just contain a two-page press releases banging on about how V was going to be the greatest TV event of early 2010, like, if you've got a decent satellite or cable bundle and can be bothered to spend an hour a week staring at Americans with the most distressingly perfect teeth ever (NB snarking aside, the show is actually pretty decent - I guess you could say it's V. good, hahaha). But I was wrong.

*Applause*


Update: More on V this way

I Told You I Was Freaky - Flight of the Conchords

"Some people say that rappers don't have feelings. We have feelings," raps Brett McKenzie on the opening track of Flight of the Conchords' second album. Sounding vulnerable and miffed, he continues, "Some people say that we are not rappers," with colleague Jemaine Clement adding defiantly: "We're rappers. It hurts our feelings when you say we're not rappers." Read more...

Britain's Best Brain, Wednesday 8pm, Five

For viewers of a certain age, Britain's Best Brain will prove both exciting and depressing. Why? Because it reunites Zoë Ball and Jamie Theakston, the duo who presented Saturday morning children's show Live & Kicking in the '90s and, slightly less memorably, Channel 4's The Priory.

Zoë and Jamie were presumably paired up in the first place because next to either of them, anyone else would look like they were kneeling down, and it's comforting to see they're both still very tall. But, like the rest of us, they do look older. Sigh.

Anyway, the show. "This is not a quiz show," Theako tells us, proudly. It sort of is, really, but the challenges are all geared to test different parts of the brain – so it's not something you can revise for beforehand, unless you count gorging on fish and blueberries.

The studio audience greet the five contestants like they're heroes returning from war, despite the fact that, as in every show like this, they're just normal people with ages, jobs, and one anecdote each.

The first round has contestants trying to answer fairly simple maths questions while heavy metal plays in their ears and disembodied voices shout numbers at them, while staring at a screen of swirling integers. It's that sort of thing.

The parts you at home can take part in – the memory tests, say – are reasonably fun, but the ones you can't – like the one where you have to watch someone wrestling with an egg timer while they're whirled around in a giant gyroscope – aren't so much.

Meanwhile, BBB's slightly clinical approach – the challenges are "each scientifically designed to test a primary brain function", we're told – means it's quite hard to root for anyone; it seems to be reducing the idea of human endeavour to something more random. In summary, then: when's the Trev and Simon revival due?

by Will Parkhouse, Tuesday 27 October 200

Originally published on Orange.co.uk