The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

One of the biggest influences on my life is a science fiction phenomenon, created by a charming man, who is sadly no longer with us. The phenomenon is Douglas Adam’s masterpiece, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

I first encountered The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the form of the television series, when it was first broadcast. I remember watching episode one on the Tuesday night, and the following day rushing strait to my local library, and to my unalloyed delight, they had just received a copy of the novel. I read it all in one sitting. My mother says that she thought I was going to burst a blood vessel, I was laughing so loudly. And then, it was down to Cardiff that weekend to get Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

It was such a hit with the people in my class, that for English, an adaptation of episode 1 was created. Unfortunately, it was staged, if you can call eight people at the front of the class staging, a few weeks before exam time, so episodes 2 through to 6 never saw the light of day.

The original novel remained one of my favourite books, and I really enjoyed Restaurant at the End of the Universe, however after that it was a case of diminishing returns, and I have still yet to finish reading Mostly Harmless, the last book in the series.

On the subject of series, I didn’t actually get around to listening to the radio series until I was in college in the late 1980’s and then only because I borrowed my girlfriend’s copy of the series on audio cassettes in pretty foil boxes, that the BBC had recently released. It was fun, but it confirmed my opinion that the best version of HHGG was the first novel, all else paled in comparison.

Why do I like HHGG so much? Apart from it still be bitingly fun, even after 25 years, I think because it is ultimate science fiction. It uses the technological perspective of bouncing around the big bad galaxy as a way of examing what life is like down here on planet Earth. In Restaurant at the End of the Universe for instance, Adams says that the President does not to wield power, but to draw attention away from the shadowy men who do, thus accurately predicting George W. Bush, whilst Ronald Reagan was still in the White House.

For as long as I can remember, a film version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has been in development. It looked as if it was actually going to happen in 2000, which is why Douglas Adams was living in California at the time of his untimely death. Everything seems to have gone quiet again on that front. I only hope that when the movie is made, it isn’t a ghastly Hollywood travesty.

I met the man himself shortly after the release of an illustrated large format hardback edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. My friend Jonjo and I were interviewing him for the ZZ9 newsletter Mostly Harmless in the Cardiff branch of Waterstones Bookshop. He was a really nice person, who answered all our questions politely and with good humour, even though he had answered them so many times before.

The news of Douglas Adam’s death was a blow. A few months earlier my Father had passed away, and I was sure there was a cosmic conspiracy to take all the good people away from this world, and leave only the bastards.

It was whilst I was in college that I first joined ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, the Official “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” Appreciation Society. This is definitely a fun organisation, dedicated to a fun topic. I have done more silly things as a result being a member of this organisation than any other, and thoroughly enjoyed myself doing it. I have also seen more parts of the UK as a result of joining ZZ9. Once a month members descend on a town, meeting up on a Saturday afternoon at a railway station, “to slouch around looking for something to do”, which explains why these gatherings are called Slouches. They also produce the killer piece of merchandise, the Beeblebear. Inspired by the character Zaphod Beeblebrox, these twelve-inch tall teddybear has two heads, three arms and an eye-patch on the right eye of the right hand. Cute does not even begin to describe them.

Now that the weekend has passed, and the announcement of a new series of Doctor Who have proven to be genuine, here are my first thoughts on the subject. The first I heard about it was when my clock/radio switched on and Terry Wogan was burbling on as he does. He said that Doctor Who should not be brought back. So I launched a string of expletives at the genial Irish personality, and rude comments about the Eurovision Song Contest. I then turned over to have a last ten minutes snooze. I had to go down to Pontypridd to get my glasses fixed, so I had forgotten all about Terry mentioning Doctor Who. I got back to Treherbert at 12:10pm, and so I went strait to work. During that twenty minutes, I logged into the Internet to check my e-mail, and read the various web pages I check daily. One of these being Outpost Gallifrey’s ‘Doctor Who’ News Page. And there it was in all its marvellous details.

My initial thought upon reading that BBC Wales’ drama department would be making it was “oh my God, they are going to cast bloody Max Boyce as The Doctor”. However, it looks as if so many senior people at the BBC are behind this relaunch, they are going to do it properly. The writer of Queer as Folk, The Grand and the messianic fantasy Second Coming Russell T. Davies has been chosen to write the series. This is excellent news as he is a life long Doctor Who fan a Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel fanatic and of course back in the 1990’s he wrote the creepy teenage series Dark Season and Century Fall for the Children’s BBC.

Why now? Why after 14 years has the BBC finally got its head out of its arse and decided to make a new series of Doctor Who. Apparently Lorraine Heggessey, the Controller of BBC1 has been trying to get Doctor Who back into production since she got the job two years ago. She was thwarted by BBC Worldwide’s wrongheaded attempts to get a feature film version of Doctor Who off the ground. As I see it, two years ago there was a changing of the guard within the top ranks of the BBC. The people who were responsible for canning the series back in 1989 had retired, a new generation took over, who as children had been scared witless by Doctor Who took over. They knew what a great show Doctor Who was and were determined to bring it back.

Current favourite with the bookies to be cast as the Doctor is Alan Davies, who stars as illusionist and all round clever dick title character of Jonathan Creek. On the negative side, the ordinary viewer will just see him as JC in space. On the plus side, as we only saw one story featuring the Eighth Doctor, the TV Movie he could fit into Paul McGann’s costume and run with that characterisation of the Doctor. The people who create the web site Tachyon TV have photoshopped Davies head onto a publicity picture of McGann leaving the TARDIS to make the photo on the right, and it looks really good. I suppose because we are all used to the site of the floppy curls with the outfit. The choice of Russell T. Davies is apparently Bill Nighy, who usually plays the upper class cad in series such as Auf Weidersen Pet. I would really like to see McGann back, but failing that get Richard E. Grant to do a live action version of his aminated Doctor from the BBCi webcast.

And on the subject of the BBCi Webcast, I was always a bit suspicious of it. I am more certain now than ever that it is a giant red herring designed to take fan attention away from the delicate negotiatins to bring a TV series of Doctor Who back

Peter the Spaz has finally been booted out of Fame Academy. I have never liked him, and it amazed me that he stayed in the Academy for so long. I think that Alister, the boring one will be the over all winner, with Alex Parks second, and Carolynne third.

I think that Richard Parks has gone to far into Simon Callow territory. Now he is just being nasty for the hell of it. If I had any influence on Endemol Productions, I would seriously consider whether or not to invite him back next year. And I know I have said it before, but I will say it again. Patrick Keilty has to go.

Woo Hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

or should that be

Woo Who!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is Coming Back

Today is my nephew James’ fifth birthday. I have just written on the card, and I am about to wrap up his present. This evening, I am going down to my sister’s house in Cwmparc for a birthday tea. Although I imagine that James will be more excited about his party tomorrow afternoon, with nine of his friends. My mother has been panicking because she can’t get the camcorder to work. We have videoed all of James’ previous birthdays so it would be sad if we missed this one. (more…)

I am sick of being single. I want a woman in my life. Surely there is someone somewhere in the World that is the ideal mate for me. The problem is, all the women who are my age are either already married. Another important factor is that I don’t think I could cope with stepchildren, too much emotional baggage. So it looks as if I have missed the boat, as no woman in her mid twenties would be interested in someone in his mid to late thirties.

I am patiently waiting for the leaves to fall from the Willow that has over the last few years grown like crazy in my garden. This is so that I can guarantee that there are no birds still nesting in it. At that point, I will have it taken down. So this is the only tree in the locality that still has bright green verdant leaves, and is showing no sign of shedding them.

My garden really is a mess. Full of weeds and bramble. Once they die back, then I have clear away the jungle. Next spring I am going to have to do something out there. The retaining wall is in place for a patio up by my house, and so much rubble was generated by the renovation, I don’t have to worry about material to back fill it. There are paving slabs in my garage to go down on the surface of the patio. I also plan to pave over large areas at the bottom of my garden, leaving large beds for my lilacs and other bushes and of course my flowering cherry tree, with a relatively small lawn to cope with.

Tomorrow is my Nephew James’ fifth birthday. He is my other sister, Janet’s son. Once again it is hard to believe how many years have passed since he was born, and how much has happened in the course of his life. I have to get a card to give him with his present. I have also been delegated the task of getting a card for my Mother to give him with his present.

I recently found a list of all the SF Conventions I had been to from 1986, when I started going to conventions, up to 1996. I would dearly love to fill in the gaps between 1997 and the present. Once I see a list of names of conventions in the UK between 1997 and 2002, I will be able to do the rest. The problem is that once a convention has happened, it is more or less forgotten about, so finding a list of past conventions, even on the Internet is difficult. Maybe someone reading this will be able to help.

The next convention I am gong to is Armadacon XV down in Plymouth. This is a small annual convention, and it will be nice to see all the familiar faces again.

I really think that whoever wrote the worm that is flooding the e-mail inboxes of the World with messages claiming to be from the Microsoft Corporation should be flayed alive, in one square centimetre pieces. This little shit has caused no end of trouble in the past few days Fortunately, the spam filtering service I use filters it away from my inbox. It would  soon have filled the spam trap, which holds 8Mb of spam, if I didn’t clean it out regularly.  This virus is exploiting holes in the security of Outlook Express, so even if I did managed to download it onto my computer, it wouldn’t be able to propagate itself as

1. I don’t run Windows
2. Even if I did, I would never use Outlook Express.

Of course it doesn’t help that Microsoft gets away with exactly what it wants to.  Ever since Bill’s friends fixed the Presidential Election, letting George W. Bush gain power, crippling the Department of Justice that was going after Microsoft for breaking the laws on Monopolies.

Is it my imagination, or has a cosmic switch been flicked, and all of a sudden the leaves are going brown. I know it looks gorgeous when the trees are all differing shades of red, brown and yellow. Sad to say that it is one last piece of magnificence before the bleakness that is Autumn and Winter. The dark half of the year as Wyvern calls it. Yesterday is the equinox, so from now on, the night times are going to be longer than the hours of daylight. Once we are back on Greenwich Mean Time then things will really be dreary. It is not surprising that so many civilisations have a mid-winter festival that coincides with the Solstice, when thing have reached their dreariest, and are starting to improve.Last night’s Fame Academy saw the expulsion of James, the irritating Taffy. He really did not deserve the boot this week. Whilst his rendition of Woman was blandness personified, at least he carried the tune. Unlike Peter the Spaz’s dreadful mugging of the Cure’s classic Friday, I’m In Love. On the face of it, this is exactly the sort of song that Peter should ace, but he couldn’t resist the temptation to prat about on stage. I don’t think James was very popular with his fellow students, which is why he lost the Student Vote. Carolynne and Peter seem to be getting closer, so much for my little theory, from earlier this month, unless of course Peter is helping Carolynne and Alex keep away prying eyes.By the end of October, my Study will have been papered and I will be able to put my carpet back down in here. One more room that looks like a real room, not a building site. I have to decide what colour I want to paint my hallway. It looks like it will be the same shade of cream that I painted my living room. Even though it is bland, it is bright, and the back of the hallway, by the side of the stairs does get really dark.

Once again, the DVD box set of Firefly is available to pre-order from Amazon. Once again it shoots to the top of the Amazon sales chart. Are you listening FOX Network. Are you sick at the way the series you cancelled is getting stronger.

20six Comment

(22.9.03 13:08)

With you on the fake Microsoft emails. And all the other junk. I’ve taken to reading all my personal mail at work, rather than downloading it at home, so that if there’s a problem the techs here have to handle it.

 

Aphrodite/Eros

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What, I wonder are the symptoms of arsenic poisoning. Last night I was cleaning the wall in my Study with the steamer, scraping back down to the distempered walls. The distemper was a lovely shade of green, which was most probably the product of arsenic being added to the distemper when it was produced. So as I have been heating up the wall, to get the last few flecks of the hideous old wallpaper I inherited with the house, so I must have been causing small amounts of gaseous arsenic into the room. No wonder I went to bed early last night feeling so absolutely lousy, with a headache and every muscle in my body aching. Tonight I will have much better ventilation in the room. Fortunately I only need to do a small patch.

Right then, enough silly quizzes, time for a proper update. If only a short one, as I am feeling really washed out.

It turned out that the curry was delayed until Saturday night. My Mother cooked me a huge mixed grill on Friday lunchtime, so the thought of a sub-continental blow-out really didn’t appeal when I finished work at 8pm. On Saturday, I ended up having Onion Bhaji for starters, Chicken Peshwari for main course, with pilau rice, a Peshwari Naan and a side order of Sag Paneer, and there really was no room for a desert.

My sister needed to use my computer last night to do some word processing, and she had a lot of work to do. Having just started a new job in Pontrhondda Primary School, she needed to get all her planning finished and filed away. I never realised that teachers had so much paperwork and red tape to make their way through.

This meant that I had a full house, as my Mother came down with baby William to watch something I had recorded for her on the SKY+, and my brother-in-law Gary was upstairs putting down replacement floorboards. This is all because Gary thinks, and I agree, that wire in trunking along a wall looks awful, so all wire, whether for the electricity, telephone or whatever is hidden behind walls, in the ceilings or under floorboards. Naturally, not all the floorboards that came up are good enough to go back down. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

I always knew I would need a thick lining paper underneath the paper I have chosen from my Study. However, the quality of the wall is far worse than expected. It is becoming more and more obvious that before any paper can be hung on my study wall, sections are going to have to be knocked back to the original stonework and replastered. This means that instead of covering my brand spanking new Iyonix PC with a large sheet and moving it to the middle of the room, as planned, it is going to have to go back into its box for a few days, as I don’t really want t exposed to all that dust.