Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I have it. 3 years of waiting. I love it. I’ve finished it.

Please let me go and finish it again.

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Much like the red sky at night delighting sailors, so does the appearance of Stargate Atlantis on Bittorrent delight me. For where there’s Atlantis, there will be SG-1. And tracker.shuntv.net now does Stargate. No more jostling in the pack for each episode. Atlantis right now is downloading at 152kB/s. Oh baby, things are right with the world once more.

It’s finally here!

Go get it.

Sadly I can safely say that I’m not as hooked or riveted by Lost as I was by the debut season of Alias, another show borne from the mind of J.J. Abrams.

Now at episode seven, I still have that ‘Pilot’ feeling. You know when you are watching a pilot of something, you simply try to enjoy it and ignore the frustration that it’s not really a ‘proper’ epsode, and next episode it will actually begin? I’ve finally pinpointed that as the feeling I’ve had about each episode of Lost to date. They are still introducing characters, which on the one hand is great because it’s a show FULL OF FLASHBACKS (and what more could a girl ask for, really?!) with plenty of background being given to each of the characters. This fact is what has me watching each week, as I love knowing as much as I can in background story about characters as is humanly possible. Conveniently, they all have highly dramatic background stories. Especially Sun and Jin — phwoar! But, back to my point, introducing characters endlessly for a quarter of a season gets very tiresome. It’s been one long, imperfect pilot.

When Alias began, even the pilot gave me a flutter of excitement. The premise of the story was awesome, the way it was being told was stimulating, and the characters were somewhat enthralling. All those elements are seemingly there for Lost also, but for me it just hasn’t all clicked into place as I would have hoped. I say hoped because gradually my loved shows are dropping out of production and are being replaced by yet further tacky yet inexpensive reality TV or the like. I used to hang out each week for Buffy, then when that left I eagerly awaited new Angel episodes all the more. After Angel‘s demise, Stargate was flooded with the brunt of my unexerted fan-girl energy, but sadly has not been at its peak of performance for the past couple of seasons. Stargate: Atlantis, which possibly does not deserve the half-strength adoration I was giving it when being aired, also helped fill that gap. Both are now on hiatus until February, along with Alias, which promises to pick up a bit next season.[ftn]

All this unspent television-loving energy needs to be released in some way, otherwise our mentally delicate Shannon will dive off her volatile precipice of sanity, which while undoubtedly amusing to some, would ultimately prove annoying and messy. A good response would therefore be to create some new shows that can fill a gap in the section of my heart reserved for love of television programs,[ftn] but sadly those US TV networks I was counting on have, even with their squillions of dollars to play with, come up with little that impresses.

Lost is shiny. It has pretty characters that seem like they will have interesting developments. Eventually. It has creepy lurking monsters which have yet to be revealed[ftn] and an already bustling romance that will take at least the entire season, possibly more, to come into fruition. All good things, mostly. It also has characters named both Shannon, and Claire. Lots of jokes to be made there. The fact that Shannon is an annoying cow is irrelevant, however that they are both gorgeously hot women — I’ve no doubt plenty of comparisons will of course be drawn.[ftn]

I will certainly keep eagerly anticipating each episode’s release (as I have to get my kicks somewhere)[ftn] but it seems I am doomed to be left unsatisfied each week. At least there is always Gilmore Girls.

Footnotes

1. Season Three didn’t in fact suck overmuch, it just dropped in standard a bit from its two predecessors.
2. This is a VERY SMALL SECTION. I’m still a girl, after all.
3. And I expect these will be the series’s Rambaldi — intriguing, but vague and never actually confronted.
4. See how wavering that sanity thing is?
5. And you may even get a review or two out of me.[ftn]
6. This statement is not legally binding and does not need to be upheld if said party can in fact, not be stuffed.

Ignoreth these false prophets spreading their Halo 2 blasphemy. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is thine one true god. Doeth not stray from the path or thou shalleth be smote good.

This movie[ftn] takes me back. It reminds me of the good old days, playing in the St Leonard’s soccer B-team. What fun we had! Those were good times, friends, good times. We had assembled the best of everyone not on the A-team.

I led the team wearing the number 1. They called me Empty Hands and nothing could get past me.

In midfield we had Tom ‘Weight Vest’ Charman. No one could leap higher than him with that belly.

Iron Head Hayko and Andrew Iron Shirt were in defense. No ball could get past them.

Matt aka Mighty Steel Leg was up front kicking the goals. No one could stop his flaming kicks.

Neil the Hooking Leg played midfield. No one knows what his nickname means.

We were coached by a lame man, old Golden Leg himself. He had no real effect on the game. He just assembled the squad and we did our thing.

We trained long and hard to try to win that Soccer Championship and the million dollars. To this day, I still recall our final match against Eltham College’s Team Evil. Team Evil was led by an ex-team mate of ours, Conrad ‘I Am So Evil’ Truscott.[ftn] He had become everything we fought against. I remember his cruel laughing face most of all.

It was a very physical game. They were a brutal team. The strength of their kicks made my hands bleed. When the going got tough, our weak teammates fled. We were down to the minimum number of players. This was it.

But no one came to save us and we lost like 14-0 or something. It was very depressing. Let us never speak of it again.

I really liked this film. It’s a wacky, fun film. The special effects are cartoon-like and combined with impressive camera work. It has funny, original wirework instead of the usual Matrix ripoff. The plot is the standard underdog team of misfits trying to win the championship. These aren’t your ordinary misfits; Stephen Chow gives a great performance trying to reunite his brother monks and his suppporting cast are hilarious. I’ve never seen such a lovable group of misfits. If it wasn’t so funny, it’d be cruel they way the good guys beat some of the other lesser teams.

Finally a quick whinge about Miramax. This film was released in Hong Kong three years ago. Miramax decided to do a limited release here with half an hour missing and horrible dubbing. The American trailers have digital underpants put on the goalie. A film this good is undeserving of such treatment.

Footnotes

1. 4 hit combo, 42% damage, Tom.
2. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Umm… Well, this is just a little bit embarrasing. I have spent the last 36 hours locked in emergency mettings of the executive committee of Efuwob (Earthlings for a Universe without Bush). We were anticipating there would be at least a couple months of legal battles before Dubya stole this election. As a result our plans to seek exile on a liberal planet where we can carry out experiments on aborted foetuses and marry members of the same sex till our hearts are content are running a little behind schedule.

There are two major problems we must overcome. Firstly we lack an interplanetary space craft. However we do not see this as a major obstacle. Bush has previously announced plans to have men walking on Mars by around 2030. If an intellect such as his thinks we can overcome the problem of interplanetary travel in 25 years, we should have it solved by this afternoon.

The second problem is potentially more serious — the need for a suitable host planet. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are made of gas so there would be nowhere to put the massive statue of Michael Moore we plan to erect. Pluto is so small and so bloody far away that it isn’t really a planet and, anyway, as good pure liberal anti-solarsystemisation types we wouldn’t want to live somewhere named after a cartoon character owned by one of the largest multiplanetal corporations. Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect and surface temperatures of 350 C, so clearly Venusians are about as pro-Kyoto as Bush himself. Mars would be ideal although as I’ve already mentioned Bush wants to go there so we’d rather burn in Hell. Or burn on Mercury, which as the only planet left would be our home. With its 400 C days, -150 C nights and no atmosphere it would be an ideal clean slate for a new land of the free and home of the brave. And best of all, a Mercurian day is almost as long as its year so we’d only be 20 or so sleeps away from the end of the Bush presidency (that is until President Bush III). (The possibility of looking for a planet outside the solar system was briefly explored. However, since the nearest of these would take tens of thousands of years to reach and since we are cautiously optimistic that there will be at least one Democratic president some time before the next ice age, it is perhaps a little far to go.)

We have set up a subcommittee to flesh out the details and expect them to report back very soon. Until then we recommend you stay away from any countries without a large evangelical Christian population in case Bush decides to invade them, and otherwise sit in self-righteous smugness knowing that at least you are smart enough to realise Bush is the biggest idiot ever to walk the planet even if 60 million dumb stupid Americans who voted for him aren’t.

Lost informs as much as it entertains. It seems that it’s not going to be a peaceful time on the island. People are arguing and some of them are hiding a secret. When I become stranded I’m going to need a shocking revelation to hide. Something that’s polemical but that we can all ultimately get over and use as a bonding experience. A drug addiction or a criminal record seem like obvious choices but I want a secret that’s a little more unusual. Maybe I could be a mental patient.

I’m also going to have to practice my flashback face. It’ll need to be brooding, serious and introspective. All the interesting characters have one. I’ll just wait for someone to say something that reminds me of my troubled past and bam! Flashback face. That will get all the hot girls, of which there are three on this island. I’d be disappointed if there weren’t any on my flight. This episode Shannon is wearing a bikini and Kate strips down to her underwear. The girls on this island aren’t perfect though: Kate is a criminal; Shannon is a bitch;[ftn] and Claire is pregnant.

The others have problems too. Meriadoc Brandybuck, or Merry as he is known to his friends, has a drug problem but as he’s found his stash he should be right for a couple of episodes. The air marshall needs urgent medical treatment. Gavin aka ‘that asian dude from Crusade‘ looks like he’s up to something but he’s not as creepy as the guy with the scar over his eye.

Aside from people’s problems, most of this episode is taken up by their attempt to get the transceiver they found to the top of the mountain to send out a radio signal. The episode finishes with Merry saying “Guys, where are we?” and the title screen helpfully replying “LOST”.

The show feels like it is starting to hit its stride in this episode. The initial problems of the crash have been resolved and several of the ongoing plotlines have been revealed. The show looks like it is set for some interesting times ahead. It reminds me of The Lost World with all this trapesing through the jungle and big scary creatures. Admittedly I don’t think Lost will get as stupid as The Lost World but it could have in the wrong hands. I am little concerned that with all the flashbacks and the close ups on characters, the show might become a bit like a soap opera. With the amount of money being spent on this show, I hope it can be avoided.

One other thing that bothers me is that there is little suspense about whether they’ll be rescued. What if the show is extremely popular? They might not be rescued for years. I shouldn’t complain about a show not being cancelled but I feel sorry for the characters if they are going to be stuck on the island for years. It’s the Jack Bauer Syndrome; if only the first season of 24 had been less successful he might have lived a peaceful life.

Footnotes

1. Why doesn’t this not surprise me?

Well done, America. Record voter turn out. You might get the hang of this democracy thing one of these days. You’re almost there. Just one, small issue.

You’ve got to vote for the clever candidate. You’ve got to vote for the non-religious candidate. And above all, you’ve got to vote for the candidate who hasn’t led you into a war under false pretences and alienated the rest of the world against you.

You all seem to be missing that. Disturbingly, based on exit polls, the majority of those with college degrees or doing postgraduate study voted for Bush. What gives? You guys are supposed to be the clever ones. The smooth pattern of increased Republican votes for a larger income is quite telling though.

Maybe next time, folks. You know, when the opportunity to vote for Alfred E. Newman has been stolen from you. Unfortunately I won’t be around to check up on you, as I’ll be on Andrew’s planet. Wherever we end up.

I blame Drew Carey.

The vote is 197 to 133 in favour of Bush. Things are not looking good. I can console myself with the fact that most of the states for Bush are in the middle of the US. That was to be expected. Hopefully the western states will vote for Kerry.

Let me refresh CNN again. Alright! California with 55 votes has gone for Kerry. 197 to 188 now. This could take a while.