The Doctor Who - Star Wars face off

Doctor Who has been a children’s TV series on the air (on and off) since 1963. One of the things which is nostalgically remembered about the series was the lack of any money for production. This meant as far as exotic locations for alien planets went, a single location, that of a gravel pit seemed to be used for outside filming to double as an alien world.


Star Wars came along in 1977, and this franchise with it’s rather more generous budget managed some much more exotic locations in terms of Tunisia, Norway and California.

However, looking at the NASA Viking images sent back from Mars, it seems the guys at Doctor Who were right, and the surface of other planets do look more like gravel pits than anything else …

But it doesn’t end there, because take a look at Russia’s Venera 13 pictures of the surface of Venus, the overall impression is undeniably gravel-pitish.

And most recently the NASA Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s mysterious moon Titan. It’s pictures from the surface of that place? Erm, like a gravel pit.

Overall then it seems that the representation of other worlds is scientifically proven to be more constant with the Doctor Who model than that used in Star Wars.

It also seems that it would seem all terrestrial bodies with an atmosphere seem gravel-pitish in their nature. The Earth itself must have been predominantly gravel-pitish in it’s early stages, evolving differently to the rest of the Solar System over time.

So fancy visiting another world? Don’t waste money on expensive space tourism ticket from Richard Branson, just get yourself down to your local gravel pit this weekend …


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1984: Repo Man

Repo Man - superb film by eccentric director Alex Cox.

Without doubt my favourite quote has to be,

J. Frank Parnell: Radiation, yes indeed! You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-boxed do-gooders telling everybody it’s bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have 'em too. When they canceled the project it almost did me in. One day my mind was literally a-burst. The next day nothing. Swept away... But I showed them. I had a lobotomy in the end.

Otto: Lobotomy? Isn't that for loonies?

J. Frank Parnell: Not at all. A friend of mine had one. Designer of the neutron bomb. Ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people. Leaves buildings standing. It fits in a suit case. It's so small no one knows it's there until blammo. Eyes melt skin explodes everybody dead. It's so immoral working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again.

Otto: What kind of car does your... does your friend drive?

J. Frank Parnell: Chevy Malibu.


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1984: The Breville sandwich maker ...

Ah - nothing makes the taste buds more nostalgic for the 80’s like a Breville sandwich maker.

It was claimed to make sandwiches more “interesting”, though today we can laugh at the naivety of it all in these post ciabata/baguette/panini days. But back in 1984, sliced bread was as good as it got, and so the Breville offered the sandwich connoisseur something a bit different, although in essence it was still a sandwich just lightly fried on both sides – oh those pre-diet conscious days!

Countless families seemed to rush out and buy one as the "in thing", inevitably stopping off at the local hospital A&E ward, soon after tasting their first one. This was because the problem was most toasted sandwiches contained cheese which would become super-heated in the sandwich toaster, inevitably causing third degree burns to the Breville virgin who bit into one for the first time.

In these more litigation aware days, it’s hard to see how in the 80’s we survived popular foods like the Breville sandwich and it’s near cousin the McDonalds apple pie, were not part of a plot to maim the general populace …


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The Crow Loves 1984 ...

I've been feeling in a somewhat retro mood all week, so to celebrate this fact, the Crow is going to look back at all that is wonderful about 1984 - no I'm not talking about the George Orwell book which has spawned infamous gameshows, but the year 1984. An impressionable year on the young teenage-at-the-time Crow ...

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The Apprentice: Real tales of big business ...

I caught some of last night's The Apprentice on BBC2 last night – not the Crow’s usual cup of tea, as he has enough of big business shenanigans during his working week.

It’s interesting, I’ve caught several of Sir Alan Sugar's interviews on the program, where he has talked about wanting to be involved in the program to give the public more of an insight into business affairs, as he feels entrepreneurial skills are poorly recognised in this country.

I think he’s bang on the money with that though, because whenever I watch it always seems to be the same story, a pack of wannabe executives all trying not to learn from their mistakes, but to desperately find the scapegoat. Proof that it’s not the losing that counts, but the finding someone else to blame …


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Why Spider-Man really changed the comics industry

Spider-Man – a lot has been written about how Spider-Man revolutionised the comics industry when he arrived in 1962. The first teen superhero, going through all the problems a typical reader did, trying to balance his costumed identity against his heroic alter ego.

But here too was the first hero who would shoot from the wrist and immobilise his enemies with his sticky white fluid.

Of course these were more innocent days, and it seems they weren't as aware of either innuendo or Freud in those days, and the restrictive Comics Code gave it their full blessing …



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Killing your co-workers #6 : Hypnotic screensavers

Hypnotic screensavers – put the term into your Google search engine and there are many to choose from. Mostly they only have the effect of making you more than a bit cross-eyed and have you reaching for the aspirin.

But what if one was created by someone who knew what they were doing, and turned their genius to evil – someone such as your truly? Imagine the carnage which could be caused as office members turned into mindless zombies – no really, I mean more mindless than they normally are – and started attacking each other. Oh the carnage as they go wild with the staplers on each other, oh the irony as Colin the safety officer batters a young graduate to death with his Health and Safety binder, oh the joy as your manager gets decapitated in the photocopier.

The Monday morning feeling at Team Crow ...

The more critical of you will mention though that hypnosis makes people more suggestible but does not make them capable of doing anything they would not normally do. To which I have to ask, “have you ever worked in an office”. Tensions are always a little high amongst office workers. Outside the office many are normal people, but inside each of the has a little Che Guevara inside waiting to come out and incite rebellion and revolution. All it takes are words like “pay freeze”, “bonus cancelled” or “sandwich trolley empty” to spark the flames of an Office Revolution ...


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J.K. Rowling – there will be no more Harry Potter

Author JK Rowling has crushed her millions of fans around the world with the announcement that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince would be her last book.

Blaming a severe bout of writers block, which has held up the last few books, Rowling has given more details in a recent interview. “Each book has become more demanding”, she explained, “I am aware of how expectations rack up with each successive instalments”.

JK Rowling displays the latest, and last in the Harry Potter books. There will be no more.

In a move that will leave the Harry Potter series without the closure many had hoped for, Rowling explained. “There’s just nothing left. And then the realisation came that I don’t have to do this. I mean it’s no longer like I need the money”.

Rumours abound that Rowling is planning to use the profits from her last book to buy “a remote estate” to escape press intrusion, possibly in the Falklands. “I just need to get away, but I’m sure I’ll be back. I still feel I have a voice to raise, perhaps in politics. I still feel the government is failing single mothers, who still get treated like second class citizens.”

JK Rowling is famous for writing her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, whilst struggling as a single mother in Edinburgh.

Just one of the many children around the world who have been distraught at the news

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Tomorrow is "Bring A Knife To Work Day"

"Beware the Ides of March"

Do you have a boss who is getting on your nerves? Why not leave some cutlery around the office, and see if your co-workers get into the spirit of the Ides of March!

All form an orderly queue now ...


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Killing your co-workers #5 : The paper tornado

This solution, though once again inventive has several limitations,

• the target must have an untidy desk, as will become clear later
• the assassin has to be prepared to come in on a weekend (most office workers will tell you this is something to be avoided)

This method utilises the same technology used in wind tunnels to create an artificial tornado.

The assassin sneaks into work of the weekend under the pretence of updating the air conditioning above the targets desk. In actuality, they are installing a large wind tunnel fan, with a cunning remote control.

Such fans are capable of creating wind speeds of several hundred miles per hour. But the object is not to suck the victim into the blade (although that could be method #6), but to instead by the installation of cunning baffles create a miniature (but full powered) tornado.

With the target in position, the artificial tornado is activated by remote, creating winds with a shear of over 100 m.p.h. The vortex thus created picks up any loose paper and post-its, hurling them at razor blade speeds.

The result is the victim paper-cut to death by their own documentation – Poetic Irony 1, Office Workers -1.

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