darl's New Writeupshttp://everything2.com/?node=New%20Writeups%20Atom%20Feed&foruser=darl2007-05-26T09:31:15ZBodger and Badger (review)http://m.everything2.com/user/darl/writeups/Bodger+and+Badgerdarlhttp://m.everything2.com/user/darl2007-05-26T09:31:15Z2007-05-26T09:31:15ZBodger and Badger was a long-running children's programme produced and aired by the <a href="/title/BBC">BBC</a> almost continuously since 1989. Nine series were made and it has effectively gone into syndication on British children's television. In this brave new era, when bands play dirty electro-stomp, or neo-punk glitch-pop, writer and actor Andy Cunningham pioneered mashed-potato comedy. To give the gist of the show, I'll quote the BBC's summary of the first few series and the wiki summary of the series six titles:
<blockquote>A sitcom aimed at young children that originally followed the adventures of an odd-job man, Simon Bodger, and his pet badger (a puppet). In the first series Bodger worked at <a href="/title/Troff%2527s+Nosherama">Troff's Nosherama</a> <strong>where he tried to keep the existence of his badger a secret</strong>. The second and third series had the pair at Letsby Avenue Junior School, where <strong>once again Simon tried to hide Badger from prying eyes.</strong><br><br>Badger bashing a vacuum with a mallet, Badger throwing mash, Bodger getting<!-- close unclosed tag --></blockquote>…Pearl (idea)http://m.everything2.com/user/darl/writeups/Pearldarlhttp://m.everything2.com/user/darl2007-05-26T08:12:41Z2007-05-26T08:12:41Z<br><br><blockquote>There's a crack - a crack in everything. That's where the light gets in. <br>--<em>Leonard Cohen</em></blockquote>
<p align="justify">
<em>Pearl</em> is a 14th-century religious dream poem of 1212 lines found in the same manuscript as the poem <a href="/title/Sir+Gawain+and+the+Green+Knight">Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</a>, along with <a href="/title/Cleanness">Cleanness</a> (which is on cleanliness) and <a href="/title/Patience">Patience</a> (about Jonah). The manuscript in which the poem survives is known as Cotton Nero A.x, so called because it came from <a href="/title/Sir+Robert+Cotton">Sir Robert Cotton</a>'s legendary library, in which manuscripts took their shelf mark from the emperor's bust on the top of their shelf, viz. <a href="/title/Beowulf">Beowulf</a> at Cotton. Vitellius A xv. Other Cotton manuscripts include the <a href="/title/Magna+Carta">Magna Carta</a> and the <a href="/title/Doomsday+Book">Doomsday Book</a>. All the Cotton manuscripts are now property of the British Library. <a href="/title/Pearl">Pearl</a> is titled arbitrarily, as are all the poems in the Gawain manuscript. Authorship is similarly unknown. We assume a single author for all four texts (I think people have done stylistic and metric analysis) and we<!-- close unclosed tag --></p>…Nathan Barley (review)http://m.everything2.com/user/darl/writeups/Nathan+Barleydarlhttp://m.everything2.com/user/darl2007-05-25T02:19:55Z2007-05-25T02:19:55Z<blockquote><blockquote><p align="justify">"Satire is a glass, wherein beholders do generally discover any face but their own."<br><em>-- Jonathan Swift, The Battle of the Books</em><br><br><!-- close mismatched tag --></p></blockquote> <p align="justify"><strong>I've only ever managed to watch one episode of Nathan Barley.</strong> <br><br>Nathan Barley has a Wasp T-12 Speechtool, with mp3 <a href="/title/Wheels+of+Steel">dex</a>, and a big number 5 because 5's the most frequently used number. It's been out for three weeks in <a href="/title/Big+in+Japan">Japan</a>- where's yours? His website, trashbat dot cock, is registered in the <a href="/title/Cook+Islands">Cook Islands</a>. Yeah, so it's called trashbat cos there's trash, yeah, that's everything around us, everything is trash, just trash everywhere. Then there's bat, which is ... - ... bat. Trashbat. It's well weapon. He is a self-facilitating media node, yeah? Peace, lambchops. He did this hilarious thing where he electrocuted his designer and animator and then put it on site with a scratch ending - it's wicked! You can see the pee stains on his<!-- close unclosed tag --></p><!-- close unclosed tag --></blockquote>…Crayfish (poetry)http://m.everything2.com/user/darl/writeups/Crayfishdarlhttp://m.everything2.com/user/darl2007-03-21T02:27:43Z2007-03-21T02:27:43Z<p><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><br><br>
<br>
Delicacy. B<a href="/title/lack">lack</a> legged, holding stalk eyes,<br>
its progress up the <a href="/title/George+Eliot">weir</a> is tentative,<br>
like a boxer sidling away fugitive<br>
from an unseen threat. The water eddies<br>
under, a <a href="/title/swollen+claw">swollen claw</a> swaying in the air<br>
til a surge flips it over on its side <br>
and carries it, flow-<a href="/title/ward">ward</a>, down the concrete slide,<br>
as would have happened had we not been there.<br>
Swallow see-<a href="/title/saw">saw</a>s interlace the autumn dusk.<br>
Our silence indicates no closeness, but<br>
a gathering far-off frost, a summer's husk.<br>
I wonder whether suffering has closure,<br>
a neat end-point, or whether there’s just<br>
crayfish, c<a href="/title/raw">raw</a>ling up the empty weir, again. <br>
<br><br><br>
</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></p>
Pretty Woman (idea)http://m.everything2.com/user/darl/writeups/Pretty+Womandarlhttp://m.everything2.com/user/darl2006-09-11T11:30:31Z2006-09-11T11:30:31Z<blockquote><p align="center">To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.</p><p >
It's a funny phrase, 'feel-good film', isn't it? It's a massive genre. They must make up a large proportion of the yearly <a href="/title/Hollywood">Hollywood</a> output. I don't have the figures, but show me a major movie that ends on a downer and I'll show you a <a href="/title/Congo">flop</a>. And yet, after watching, say, <em><a href="/title/Ten+things+I+hate+about+you">Ten things I hate about you</a></em> as a teen about to go through the rituals that make up the film I was filled with a profound sadness. Not just because I'm a grumpy arsehole, but also because the <a href="/title/American+Beauty">deeply aspirational content</a> of the these films pimps dissatisfaction and satisfaction in equal measure - every <a href="/title/William+Blake">symmetry</a> inevitably shows you your own asymmetries. Their successes illuminate your failures. And so on. I find feel-good films so enormously depressing that I stick<!-- close unclosed tag --></p><!-- close unclosed tag --></blockquote>…The New Imperialism (idea)http://m.everything2.com/user/darl/writeups/The+New+Imperialismdarlhttp://m.everything2.com/user/darl2006-08-19T13:54:58Z2006-08-19T13:54:58Z<blockquote>
<p align="justify">
<strong>Background</strong><br>
It is nothing new, nothing new at all for rich parents to send their kids away. My favourite one is <a href="/title/James+Boswell">James Boswell</a>, who in return for agreeing to go to Law School in <a href="/title/Utrecht">Utrecht</a> for a year, got his dad to pay for him to spend a year whoring around Europe. This was in 1761, perhaps. Even before this, there was the <a href="/title/Grand+Tour">Grand Tour</a>. And later <a href="/title/The+Ambassadors">Americans in Paris</a>. So there is nothing unusual in the apparently educative values of travel being bought by the privileged for their <a href="/title/Spawn">spawn</a>.<br><br>
<strong>Current situation</strong><br>
Things have changed. And, yet they haven’t changed at all. Travel is cheap, the world has shrunk, etc etc. As the old privileged classes used to <a href="/title/Little+Dorrit">travel abroad to Europe</a>, now the proportionately less wealthy are able to go far further. What used to be adventure – The Orient – is now quotidian fare. The growth industry here is what is called charity tourism. Once they have their 17<!-- close unclosed tag --></p><!-- close unclosed tag --></blockquote>…