Tiger Tom's Horrid Gibes

First off, lets start with UFO's. In times gone by, men claimed they met with angels, or had been taken away by the fairies. Now in our technological era, it's creatures in spaceships from another galaxy. A higher, different order of beings, come to help us or ensnare us. Something is going on, certainly, but the answer lies in the human psyche, I think. We cannot admit these phenomena into the realm of what we call fact, as they cannot be measured. This irritates UFOlogists, but it's rather like a child insiting it's magic friend is real - he may be, but it isn't pertinent to our everyday life. We share a ground of provable hypotheses. It allows our technological culture to flourish. Believe what you want in your own time, but let the rest of us get on with the business at hand.

  Princess Diana. Ironic that Mother Teresa, a woman with a genuine claim to sainthood, died at the same time as a Lady Bountiful figure who embodied modern England's artifiical obsession with celebrity, physical beauty and trite demonstrations of charity. Charity, noblest of the Christan virtues, debased by association with a neurotic popular icon and brood mare for an ersatz monarchy. A fantasy figure for all who would play at being King (or Queen), with all of the glamour and none of the responsibilty. Foolish woman. She wanted to be Mrs Windsor as well as Queen. She didn't know one precludes the other. I suppose my main gripe is it's hard to escape such media-inflated figures, while the real movers and shakers quietly go about their business, poking Joe Public up the rear end, and making him love it. Ever had the feeling you'd been cheated?

SEX. I had to put this in. People keep floating around the statistic that 90% of web activity revolves around this. Where did that figure come from? It makes me think, if this is so, and given the popularity of the subject in British tabloid newspapers, that many fewer people are doing IT than are letting on. Otherwise why all these poor substitiutes? Or maybe people have too much time on their hands. The dirty little devils.

I've had a look at those sex sites which are '100% free'. While some of the teaser photo's ARE ghastly, you have to stump up your credit-card details before you can see more. Greed censoring prurience: excellent! Your children are safe. You need never use them as an argument to censor the 'net. And if your children are likely to seek out porn while on-line (and it isn't easy - you have to deliberately search for it in Altavista or other engines), what does that say about them? Kids will always look for things they shouldn't anyway: whatever adults find objectionable often fascinates them.

Babylon 5 . Televisual science fiction of a very high standard. Only marred by weak scripting and characterisation for the female parts - who cared if Delenn or Ivanova lived or died? And as for Marcus... The Man Who Never Got His End Away. Very one dimensional. Also marred by the American obsession with Talking About Our Feelings, and their relationship with their fathers, curiously. AIIIEEE, get back, I say !! "I love you Dad" "I love you too, son" MERCY! Shoot them in the head now!

Microsoft. Presidents court Mr. Gates, techies hate his guts. Mind you, politicians would court a billionaire even if he had 666 tatoooed on his forehead. All I'll say is this - whenever I want to use Internet Explorer 3 as a browser, I can't go to my chosen address without letting it go to www.microsoft.com first. And it won't let me change this (the 'home' address)*. And as for using it for e-mails, well, it seems to want to take the decisions out of my hands. All these unnecessary functions. Here's a quiz - name one Microsoft product that's an original idea and/or that worked properly immediately after release?

For bonus points, name one Microsoft product that didn't try to make its' competitors products unusable. Or that didn't copy them wholesale.

See?

*and no, I'm sure there's a work-around, thanks, but I don't care anymore.

Ah, film of happy memory. A pity it started this vulgar merchandising which has led to rubbish like Jurassic park. The ending of Return of the Jedi was quite squirmsome, too. I rather felt like setting alight to those charming little Ewoks. Still, at least one can take comfort from the fact that they were played by children and midgets on shite money (probably). Also, the Empire Strikes Back had a bit of that "I love you Dad" crap as well. And now, the 'prequels'? Another useful addition to the language. Look, why don't we just send our money straight to George Lucas and save the poor man the bother of making them?.

Bill Clinton. Apart from all the 'funny, haha' jokes about this man's sex life, I wonder if Americans realise how badly the hounding of their head of state looks to the rest of the world? Good lord, it takes most leaders a bungled war or economic disaster to get that amount flak, while others slowly drain their countries of their money, resources and sometimes citizens. Personally I don't care if he's bonked every half-presentable female over the age of fifteen in Washington. He hasn't started a war or buggered up the economy a la Ronald Reagan and the Savings and Loan debacle; or like George Bush, Oliver North and the Contras, plus 'Desert Storm', or their earlier predecessors and the Vietnam War. I think the Americans have caught a touch of 'Winfreyitis', where facile moral outrage takes precedence of good sense and pragmatism. And the disease has spread to Britain.

Star Trek. Original series, fine. Subsequent ones - The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine - neutered by this obsession with pop psychology and Talking About Our Feelings, and, yet again, one-dimensional token characters. I suppose it's cheaper than special effects, and fills the time in nicely between encounters with aliens. I watch them all religiously, of course.

The Spice Girls. A quintet of faintly vulgar young ladies from Bradford. Doing quite nicely for themselves it would appear, but I'd like to see a breakdown of the gross returns from their music and merchandising, and who gets what. Girl Power? - a piece of media babble. Underlying message - be boisterous and dress like jailbait and you'll get what you want: up the duff with a babby in one hand and a fag in the other (translation : babby = baby, fag = cigarette). Oooh, I'm cynical.

Leonardo diCaprio and the film "Titanic". The one interesting thing about this phenomenon is how it will skew the already warped output of Hollywood. Now spending $200m on a film will seem normal. Expect more, 'bigger', and fewer films in the years to come, at least from the major studios. I'm so worried.

And never mind that it made a mock of historical fact. I knew Hollywood was bogus when I saw 'The Quiet man' as a lad. A mark of a true Irishman is how much that film makes him squirm. I have NEVER, EVER, heard an Irish man or woman say 'begorrah' unless they were being ironic. Crap, all crap.

And Me. Nah, you don't really want to know about me. I'm boring. I usually find it's the case the more people want to tell you about themselves the less they are worth knowing. So I'm gonna keep quiet.