Special Offer! Bridge toll down to $450 one-way! But hurry, this offer won't last!

Rubicon Industries?

Your bridge has been privatised.

I lol'd.

Special Offer! Bridge toll down to $450 one-way! But hurry, this offer won't last!

Your bridge has been privatised.

I lol'd.

So what do we make of the absolute power of the new National Government.

Change and provocation everywhere, and parliament has barely sat.

Warning signs galore

Your bridge has been privatised.

Change and provocation everywhere, and parliament has barely sat.

Warning signs galore

[...] among the regular characters there are female fighter pilots, transport pilots, technicians, politicians, aides, spiritual leaders, a President and previously, an Admiral.

And one of the grimmer jokes in the mini-series was that after Laura Roslin suddenly jumps forty seven places in the line of succession, nobody bats an…

When the…

When I was a solider we always reffered…

Star Trek Mk 1 was waaaaay sexist: they gave Uhura the spacecraft equivalent of a receptionist's job

They sorta tried. There was an episode where the script originally called for Uhura to be left in charge of the bridge while the away team got, I dunno, kidnapped or something. Paramount…

It breaks my heart everytime a man calls me "dude". It seems like he's saying that he thinks of me as a man, and my femaleness is being ignored, which is horrible.

Whereas I like it. To me it's friendly and inclusive and warm. How do you feel about 'guy',…

So conflicted. Mini skirt and go-go boots = nomnomnomnom. Woman in position of authority constantly having to yank skirt over arse = do not want.

Wordy McWord. Although despite all that fine rhetoric about equality and fraternity and interracial harmony, Star Trek Mk 1 was waaaaay sexist: they gave Uhura…

For some reason, in my mind, 'dude' is non-gender specific. No offence intended, I assure you!

It breaks my heart everytime a man calls me "dude". It seems like he's saying that he thinks of me as a man, and my femaleness is being ignored, which is horrible.

Well, there's an argument that genre fiction is where you get those uncomfortable question under the radar in way 'mainstream' culture can't is precisely because it's marginalised as 'unrealistic' or 'lowbrow'.

Heh, where were you when I was trying to convince the English Dept that I could do my thesis…

Is there another genre people get SO exercised about, politically?

Well, there's an argument that genre fiction is where you get those uncomfortable question under the radar in way 'mainstream' culture can't is precisely because it's marginalised as 'unrealistic' or 'lowbrow'. While I'd never claim Isaac Asimov as a proto-feminist,…

What we always knew about Kirk & Spock.

I hadn't seen that particular one before. It was both funny and deeply disturbing.

Dear David,

I apologise sincerely for what I've done to your thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70r2vjTlfFM

oh, come on! C-3PO and R2D2 were more than just good buddies

And we're perilously close to banging volvos together again.

Nope — just Willow Rosenberg, Admiral Helena Cain, Susan Ivanova, Mirror Universe Kira Nerys, and Gina/Six. All guaranteed to give Ian Wishart — and sexually insecure geeks everywhere --…

To meld the two threads together, I've been told that Moore is part of a vast heterosexual conspiracy to remove gay people from the future. Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, even Bab 5 – not so much as a camp cocktail.

Nope — just Willow Rosenberg, Admiral Helena Cain, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Ivanova|Susan…

To meld the two threads together, I've been told that Moore is part of a vast heterosexual conspiracy to remove gay people from the future. Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, even Bab 5 – not so much as a camp cocktail.

oh, come on! C-3PO and R2D2 were more than…

No, in a totally perverse way it's a tribute to Whedon's power to get under people's skins. I think Ronald Moore has the right attitude: The guy's been accused of being everything from a misogynist sleazebag who gets off on brutalising women to a politically correct Hollyweird femi-Nazi.

Heh, and…

Did any of your explainers cite their sources?

God no — Coward may have been camp as a row of pink tents, but it seems to me that you have to be remarkably obtuse not to pick up that, in most other ways, he was very much a small-c cnservative.…

To get back on topic, I've had it solemnly explained to me that Brief Encounter is just more proof of the homosexual agenda to undermine respect for the family, marriage and all that other good stuff.

Yes, that's the crazed theory that I had in mind when…

I am, and you would not believe how much, sorry I brought it up.

No, in a totally perverse way it's a tribute to Whedon's power to get under people's skins. I think Ronald Moore has the right attitude: The guy's been accused of being everything from a misogynist sleazebag…

She wrestled D4J in the australasian blogisphere smack down?

Now I'm going to ponder the question of…

I read that one too Emma, and while there was some (NB but not all, by any means) of it that I thought made good points, calling him a rapist was just bizarre. And hate filled.

Oy and vey... If you're referring to this, it wasn't bizarre but mind-bendingly offensive.…

One of the worst things I've ever read was an extensive essay about what a misogynistic bastard Joss Whedon is, playing out his rapist fantasies.

I read that one too Emma, and while there was some (NB but not all, by any means) of it that I thought made good…

Heh... Good call. Great show, but I don't think much of it is necessarily pre-teenage appropriate.

Ahahaha. She's already watched series 1 and 2 and three arrives this weekend. We've been watching them together as a family and so far there hasn't been anything we weren't happy with them seeing.…

were you also trying to win the award for the longest header?

Hadn't occurred to me, but that's not a bad idea, dude! Maybe we should have internal PA awards for longest header, most ungrammatical sentence, most distasteful imagery involving a Volvo, etc. Russell?

Don Christie wrote:…

greek cred

Are we back at the Isle of Lesbos again?

If it's any consolation, that's what my daughter wanted for her 11th birthday and didn't get.

Heh... Good call. Great show, but I don't think much of it is necessarily pre-teenage appropriate. Though like Whedon much as I love horror movies, I want to puke at the standard trope of…

Though I've got to wonder if there's something a teeny tad perverse about a (near) middle-aged man buying himself the complete run of Buffy The Vampire Slayer on DVD as a birthday present.

If it's any consolation, that's what my daughter wanted for her 11th birthday and didn't get.

Ahh...... happy birthday perhaps?

Sure — If life's a bad joke with the ultimate punchline, you might as well learn to tell it as well as you possible can. Though I've got to wonder if there's something a teeny tad perverse about a (near) middle-aged man buying himself the complete…

Best use of Brief Encounter for (tragi)comic relief since Alan Bennett's "The History Boys". Ooh look, here it is.

Funny that the SIS had offices in the the old ASB building, a rather prominent part of town at the time unless.... you want to be very…

the traditional birthday dinner

Ahh...... happy birthday perhaps?

Indeed.

And you've no need to review your sensibleness/sensibilities, just some of your commentary is a bit beyond me, however; I know funny when I see it even if I don't entirely understand it!

the traditional birthday dinner

Ahh...... happy birthday perhaps?

Craig, I wish I knew what this meant--

Told twice in one day by smart people I'm making no sense whatsoever — perhaps time to stop pretending to work, and contemplate the traditional birthday dinner: Near raw steak, chips, with a side order of chips and something that's almost pure…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIhVE41Zac8&feature=related

i googled to find out what this is all about... and this very blog comes in as the first result!

ian wishart absolute power – Google Search

more power to david haywood!

Now that is a result.

were you also trying to win the award for the longest header?

i googled to find out what this is all about... and this very blog comes in as the first result!

ian wishart absolute power – Google Search

more power to david haywood!

Yeah, sorry about the Volvo gag, Emma. Right up until the last moment, I was wondering if it might be in dubious taste, and whether I should leave it out.

Ha, I shall be reading it aloud to Karl the very minute he gets home from work.

I'm not allowed…

Yeah, sorry about the Volvo gag, Emma. Right up until the last moment, I was wondering if it might be in dubious taste, and whether I should leave it out.

Of course it was in dubious taste! But it was oh so funny.

Craig, I wish I knew what this meant--

Nope, Andrew. At the risk of semi-Godwining myself (and giving Wishart the change to play free speech martyr), the Protocols of…

And oddly, all the time I spent just yesterday reading about Vita Sackville-West and Violet Keppel, not once did I picture two Volvos crashing together. That won't be not happening again.

Yeah, sorry about the Volvo gag, Emma. Right up until the last moment, I was wondering…

Sometimes, you just got to call bullshit what it is and expose the bullshitters to the contemptuous laughter they so richly deserve.

Quite. I'm done with the big Poneke thread now, but I think the exercise has been a useful enough means of demonstrating the absurdity of his argument, the…

I kept waiting for someone to walk in with a dead seagull complaining about the cherries.

And oddly, all the time I spent just yesterday reading about Vita Sackville-West and Violet Keppel, not once did I picture two Volvos crashing together. That won't be not happening again.

... I wonder why this blog site is getting so 'exercised' about Ian's book. Let it be. If it's rubbish, then it will self-destruct anyway.

possible reason:

sometimes the nutters talk so loudly, and so fast, and get so good at hiding their pyrotechnic leaps of logic that the uninformed…

Let it be. If it's rubbish, then it will self-destruct anyway.

Nope, Andrew. At the risk of semi-Godwining myself (and giving Wishart the change to play free speech martyr), the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were exposed as a nasty farrago of hateful lies a very long time ago.…

Please let Rachmaninoff be playing in the background of this scene. It is, isn't it?

Hell, yes! Piano Concerto #2. I had it in my first draft but didn't think anyone would get it. Oh, lovely PA readers, how mistaken I was to underestimate you.

Jennifer says I…

Eddie Clark wrote:

... "Absolute Power: the Master Builder Edition."

This is pure genius, Eddie! Incidentally, I've often thought that Ibsen would be an ideal candidate…

Can Act 2 be a monologue of him channelling/communicating with Jebus?

...I also had visions of this sort of thing being conducted in the context of an Ibsen realist drama. "Absolute Power: the Master Builder Edition."