F2

I am astounded that any white man could deride the badly named 'Bollywood' film industry when the 'original and best' Hollywood has such an output of unmitigated, relentless crap.
Maybe the 'made for TV' industry is estranged from the big H, but where I live I get a non stop homogenised supply of not even B grade American movies on my redily available Slovenian and Croatian TV channels; tonight, true to form, three military films, one a series, but uniformly (pun intended) pulp literature on celluloid, low grade half hearted war films with great prejudice displayed... I'm sorry; I have the remote; off goes the TV. If I can be bothered waiting till after midnight I might cop an early Jim Jarmusch, or another B&W gem from way back, but these never get aired when my brain is up. I'm starting to realise an early to bed routine which I was never known for. If I had a choice, I'd plump for the Wim Wenders/Werner Herzog/Lars von Trier style of films; there is a ton of distinctive talent out there that cannot be replicated by the Tom Cruise/Nicholas Cage/Harrison Ford style of same old same old, and yet we have a supply chain drizzling this turgid effluent into our homes every night, without anyone crying 'Stop!' CNN have a similar mindset, and they are a 'news' channel, yet, repetition of yesterday's news is, to my mind, not; OK, they're Time Warner; Ted Turner was a brash and pushy bloke when I met him in the early seventies; now he has allowed his product to become the very shadow of what he set out to create; Ted's a yachtsman, but you'd hardly know that any sailing boats were currently engaged in a variety of really fascinating races; that one of the big names in yachting had retired in the face of a doping scandal, and that there are more life threatening challenges being overcome every day on the waves, if you relied on CNN for your daily dose of sports coverage. So call me sour if you like, but I cannot imagine a bigger network of people than the CNN crowd being 'everywhere' on this globe and specifically avoiding most of the interesting stuff, and specifically targeting the mundane and tediously repetitive low interest nonsense that they manage to fill our day with. (And will someone tell me that a pair of 'anchors' is necessary to deliver this drivel, with their bright smile at the intro of every fresh disaster?) There is a new software coming up now called 'Twitter', a term describing the utterly lightweight chat that emanates from low intellect social butterflies of the 20th century. Facebook I can understand, but from hanging out with the slacker crowd a few years back and hearing the perennial question 'what're you up to?' and the standard 'nothing' or 'not much', as acceptable dialogue between acquaintances, I think it is fair to assume we have seen the death of creativity as we knew it, and we now are well on the path to blinding, grinding mediocrity. Nuff said.

Blog V2

I've known a few bods in my time with the desire to be a vet; vocation and viability is often a questionable factor; in France, you have to be 'connected' to get into a veterinary school; I've known people achieve a double degree in Veterinary Science, but, having spent the best part of a day getting a dodgy lump removed from one of our two rats, with six visits to two vets, and just completing a return trip to the successful vet to have the stitches renewed, as small furry animals seem to be more active than even vets imagine, I am beginning to reflect on all these folk who want to care for animals, and if I could ask one thing of veterinary science it would be to get the art of dressing wounds down to a more precise science than I have witnessed today. Perhaps I am a pioneer in the field of casual observation of veterinary problems, but I'd wager I'm not the first to be assured of a traumatic evening as we collectively try to keep a dressing on this little rat. I have taken in all the advertising on the walls of the waiting rooms and surgeries; take it from me if you haven't been in one recently, there is a huge market out there that the companies are identifying and targeting; Pfizer, Hills, Eukanuba, Bosch, they're all there, so please, can we get this 'effective dressing' system sussed befor I get much older. Perhaps I am meant to be the one who pioneers it; I'm just raising awareness, as I'm fed up with the hundred odd kilometers and the many Euros I've shelled out today for what I can only describe as a job uncompleted and mischievously lacking in finesse. Whatever product or service you plan to build your life around, for chrissakes make sure you complete the job; I don't want to labour the point, but if you want to put men on the moon, meals on wheels, or bandages on bodies, please assess the whole picture FROM DAY ONE, and continue to review the results of all that investment in your time and effort, and GET IT RIGHT. I've had spray on dressings on my many injuries and repairs for at least the last twenty years; today's experience with the rat was the worst of this twenty first century that I can recall, and if we are going back to bog primitive, can you at least make your bills reflect the last century too?
Nuff said.