Pooh and Piglet – Swine Flu Edition

Hat tip – Dr John Crippen at NHS Blog Doctor

Important Safety Information – Do YOU Have Swine Flu?

If you would like to find out whether you have Swine Flu, a helpful site has been provided here.

Requiescat in Pace – Bea Arthur

The wonderful gravel-voiced actress Bea Arthur of Golden Girls fame has passed away at the age of 86.

RIP Ms Arthur.

Gordon Brown helps with the office chores…

Iain Martin, the only member of the Labourgraph’s political staff worth reading (and who is rumoured by Guido to be leaving, presumably to seek work with an actual proper newspaper) brings us this priceless report on the behaviour of the Prime Mentalist.

“The strain shows, say current and former Brown aides: Among other things, it has inflamed a temper that has always been the subject of gallows humor among those who work with him, they say. The prime minister, 58, has hurled pens and even a stapler at aides, according to one; he says he once saw the leader of Britain’s 61 million people shove a laser printer off a desk in a rage. Another aide was warned to watch out for “flying Nokias” when he joined Brown’s team. One staffer says a colleague developed a technique called a “news sandwich” — first telling the prime minister about a recent piece of good coverage before delivering bad news, and then moving quickly to tell him about something good coming soon. Brown’s spokesman, Michael Ellam, declined to comment.”

PS I was told by a usually very reliable Labour source that Brown, helping out with the stapling, had at one point lost his temper and actually stapled his own hand by mistake. That simply cannot be true and I refuse to believe it.”

You couldn’t make it up. 14 months to go, unless the men in white coats intervene first.

Wonder Bra (Guest Post from Mrs Fleet)

“A US woman had a lucky escape when a burglar’s bullet bounced off the metal underwire in her bra.

Police in the city of Detroit said one of three intruders fired a shot when the woman looked out of her window and saw them raiding the house next door.

The bullet smashed the window and hit her, but instead of causing serious injury – or worse – it was deflected off the wiring in her bra.

The unnamed 57-year-old woman was taken to hospital and released the same day.”

From the BBC here.

Cheap Aid

Who would have thought so much could be achieved with so little money!)

(Click on the image to make it bigger)

Debt of 1000 Years

The Romulan Ambassador to the Court of St James, John Redwood, has a post on his blog which is well worth a read. His observation on the size of the UK’s debt is particularly chilling, and has brought home to me the sheer scale of the economic horror that Labour has unleashed on the UK.

“We will be paying these bills for years. They plan to borrow more in two years than all previous governments combined have borrowed in 1000 years. That is going to be painful to repay.”

Insecurity

From EatLiver

Does The Damn Thing Work?

Found this on the web – don’t know who to credit it to, but if you came up with it let me know and I will cheerfully give you the credit. I have attached a copy to the photocopier at work where it is causing great amusement!

The Zoo

Here is a lovely picture of some animals at the Zoo (or the Eoo as Miss Fleet would have it). As you can see it has pride of place in my office. Some of the animals are a little.. er.. unusual. I have provided some labels incase any of them are not clear.

The best thing about it is that if you look closely (click on the image for a larger version) each animal has a dear little smiley face on it.

Our PM is not, repeat NOT, a weirdo

Fraser Nelson (one of the best Political Journalists around even if he does sound as though he is in the process of being strangled) has a glorious take on our PM’s.. er.. unusual performance while announcing his new proposals on MPs expenses here. Be sure to watch the video on YouTube which Fraser links to.

For anyone who has a daughter…

The great Neil Gaiman reads his poem Blueberry Girl. Wonderful, isn’t it!

Just Another Night Chez Fleet

(Actually Miss Fleet has been gathering all the cans from the last couple of weeks to carry them out to the recycling bin!)

Requiescat in Pace J G Ballard

Visionary Sci-Fi author James Graham Ballard has died at the age of 78 after a long battle with prostate cancer.

Ballard was well known for both his autobiographical novels and also for his dystopian and often brutal writings too. Several of his works were made into films, including Empire of the Sun (loosely based on Ballard’s own experiences during the Second World War) and most notoriously the brutal, erotic Crash.

RIP

Roaming Gnome

With spring now sprung in Oxfordshire, Miss Fleet retrieved from the shed her beloved tractor, a present from her Uncle and Aunt Farmer. We set off on an expedition ’round the block’, accompanied by Miss Fleet’s dear friend Cecil the Slightly Camp Gnome, who adopted a proprietorial air in the trailer.

Out foray coincided with the arrival of the bin men, who fell about laughing as a stern faced four-year-old powered past them on a miniature John Deere towing an effete gnome and trailed by an shifty and embarrassed looking thirty-six year old man with a crafty cigar on the go.

Hello, or more accurately Goodbye, Dolly!

One of my favourite blogs is The Lakelander’s View, the satirical thoughts (and marvellous photoshopped pictures) of a self proclaimed Village Idiot from the Lake District. His post today is particularly super!

Best Sci-Fi Shows Ever

Battlestar Galactica

In my view the reimagined Battlestar Galactica (Executive Produced by Ron Moore) is the best TV series ever made. Ostensibly a science-fiction series, it managed to also become a remarkable commentary on the modern world, to the extent that members of the cast and crew were asked to participate in discussions at the UN recently.

Epic in scope an ambition, it started out as the story of the survivors of the genocide of humanity at the hands of their own creations, the Cylons, but became something far grander and better. The series is devoid of conventional heroes and villains, it’s characters reflecting various shades of grey, and the tone is as dark as pitch. It features a remarkable cast, from whom one can particularly call out Eddie Olmos as Bill Adama, the fleet’s military leader – a tired man whose career is in the process of ending in failure when he and his elderly, outdated warship (the Galactica) are called upon to become the last hope of humanity, and Mary McDonnell as the cancer-stricken Education Secretary Laura Roslin, who finds herself elevated to President with the murder of the rest of the civilian government. Beset by visions, Roslin becomes convinced that the Gods are showing her the way to salvation.

Starting with a mini-series and running for four seasons, BSG maintained a remarkable level of consistency in it’s quality, and if the fourth season wobbled slightly at times the show’s finale was a triumph – a sublime pulling together of myriad threads which managed to give a sense of hope to the ending of this darkest of shows.

Farscape

A greater contrast to the dark, epic grandeur of Battlestar Galactica it would be harder to find. Anarchic, funny, often profoundly moving, and featuring Muppets in leading roles, the Australian sci-fi series Farscape is an often overlooked but utterly glorious confection. At times startlingly pervy, the show, created by Rockne S O’Bannon, told the story of a human astronaut (Ben Browder as Commander John Crichton) who finds himself hurled through a wormhole into the company of a group of misfit criminals on the run from the brutal Peacekeepers aboard a living vessel controlled by the wise, gentle Pilot. Cancelled suddenly at the end of it’s fourth season, a write-in campaign by fans stimulated the production of a 2-part miniseries which enabled a satisfactory ending to the adventures.

Genre favourites Browder and Claudia Black as rogue Peacekeeper Officer Aeryn Sun bring real chemistry to the tentative and genuinely touching romance between the harsh, stiff soldier for a quasi-fascist regime and the wisecracking, irreverant human astronaut driven half mad by the trauma of what is happening to him, while the group of Australian character actors who populate the rest of the cast (many of them graduates of Neighbours or Home and Away) create a memorable ensemble of nymphomaniacs, living plants, creatures that can melt metal by screaming and all manner of other weirdos.

Firefly

Firefly is one of the great missed opportunities of US TV in the last decade. A fantastically cast, beautifully realised and splendidly plotted production by Buffy creator Joss Whedon, the show lasted only 11 episodes (out of 14 filmed) before being cancelled in mid-run. Set in a universe deliberately evocative of the cowboy era of Earth, the show tells the story of Captain Mal Reynolds, an ex-soldier on the losing side in a war, who operates a small commercial spacecraft on the edge of the law. Accompanied by his loyal crew and with a priest, a high class courtesan and a mysterious doctor and his sister on the run from the authorities, Firefly had Whedon’s trademark witty dialogue and exploration of the fallibility of humanity.

Hamstrung by the first episodes being shown out of order, the show never recovered, and was cancelled without all the episodes being shown. It rapidly developed a cult following however, and came back for the theatrical movie Serenity which tied up the story. Firefly is also notable for featuring the world’s most lovely actress, Canadian Jewel Staite

Babylon 5

Last but not least comes a series of an earlier vintage than the other three. Babylon 5 was the brainchild of Producer J M Straczynski, whose creative genius is imprinted on every aspect of the show. B5 was the first multi-season production to carry an arc story across the whole of it’s run, telling the story of the titular space station and the epic deeds of it’s inhabitants both human and alien. The aliens were genuinely alien (rather than Star Trek style people with rubber foreheads) and were brought to life by a remarkable cast including Andreas Katsulas portraying the redeemed Narn G’Kar, and the extraordinary Croatian actress Mira Furlan, who brings tenderness and an edge of steel born in the tragic (and at that time recent) history of her homeland to her role as the Minbari warrior-priestess Delenn.

The characters of Babylon 5 each went on their individual journeys. Some made it – others didn’t. At times B5 was as dark as BSG, or as light and anarchic as Farscape, and although it now feels a little dated and probably went on a season too long it remains a landmark in television history.