So, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru are launching a legal action over the Beeb's decision to exclude them from the televised Leadership debate... Hmm, I'm sure they'd both have more of a case if they put candidates up for election in the rest of the country and had received more than a combined 2.1% of the total UK vote in the 2005 election, then they might have have more of a case for getting on national TV. I'm sure they'd get more support for independence if they did give the majority of voters in the UK a chance to say what they feel about the issue as lets face it, most people are sick and fed up of people like Alex Salmond preaching to people who think that the events depicted in a certain Mel Gibson film are an accurate representation of history and a representation of the state of play in modern Britain... Seriously, appealing to people who think Braveheart is real is like using Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome as the basis of a case for Australia to become a republic. Damn you Queen Tina Turner, damn you to heck! Thinking about it, I think I'd prefer Tina Turner as our head of state, if only to get 'What's Love Got to Do With it?' as our national anthem... I'm sure 'Simply The Best' would be considered, but that's more of an America type of song, you know... We're far too self deprecating and slightly cynical.
On the subject of voting, the Lib Dems want electoral reform as a precondition if they're to form part of a coalition, a switch to Proportional Representation which the European Elections have shown is an absolutely dreadful idea. Seriously, the system we have right now is poor, but PR will bring all the screaming nutjobs a step closer to actual power as it has in the European elections. I know parties I lean toward like the Greens would benefit greatly from that system, but it would mean we get UKIP loons and god forbid, the BNP reaching parliament which is nightmare fuel. I don't want those nutjobs anywhere near power, it'd be an embarrassment to the country and to my species, I want to vote Lib Dem, but as long as proportional representation remains such a big priority for them, I'm not sure I will. Seriously, if a political party makes me seem sane, they shouldn't be allowed near power, ever... Then, that would disallow 99.9% of all political parties everywhere... Which probably wouldn't be a bad thing.
-Ryco.
Monday, 26 April 2010
Sunday, 25 April 2010
Ryco's three favourite songs of the week!
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I listen to a -lot- of music so I thought I'd use my shiny new blog to ramble about it. So, with no further adieu, here are my three favourite songs of the week! *plays a fanfare on his thumb* Tantadada!
Bu Bu Poruche by Melody Chubak
From the soundtrack to Loco Roco.
Aka, Yellow's theme, it's a song from the soundtrack to Loco Roco, which the only reason I ever touch my PSP. (Seriously Sony, sort the browser out or let someone who can write a decent browser do so.) It's bright, sunny and written in a delightful nonsense language, I can't help but smile whenever I hear it and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
The longest time by Billy Joel
From the album An Innocent Man.
I'm a sucker for Billy Joel and his flirtation with Doo-wop in the mid 80s, Uptown Girl is pretty awesome too, but this song is far prettier and far more impressive, considering Billy Joel did all the voices on it. Admittedly, this song seems to have spawned a thousand Youtube impersonators, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and unlike Uptown Girl, it is yet to be murdered by an Oirish boyband... I'm pretty sure Westlife were created to stop U2 being the most embarrassing band to come from Ireland. (Hi, I'm Bono and I'm planning a lifelong poverty fight and to start, I'm moving my business abroad to pay less tax.)
Days by Kirsty MacColl
(From the albumKite)
A cover of a Kinks Track which, unlike the afore mentioned Billy Joel cover version and 95% of covers in general, manages to be better than the original. It makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck at times and it makes me feel more than a little melancholy. Listening to it takes me back to when I first heard it, reminding me of simpler times when I was still in bright eyed and innocent and I was more in love with life. It also reminds me of all the people I've known who I've let go without ever saying thankyou, people who I've just drifted apart from for various reasons and found that it's far too late to thank them now I'm grown up enough to appreciate them more... Still, I'll remember those days all my life and treasure them, it's all I can do.
Still, melancholy thoughts aside, it's a beautiful song and Kirsty's version is outstanding. It shows off just how wonderful a voice she had, it's more than a little haunting given her tragic death, still this is the song that made me fall in love with her work and the song that I point people at when I feel like telling someone just how wonderful an artist she was.
-Ryco.
Bu Bu Poruche by Melody Chubak
From the soundtrack to Loco Roco.
Aka, Yellow's theme, it's a song from the soundtrack to Loco Roco, which the only reason I ever touch my PSP. (Seriously Sony, sort the browser out or let someone who can write a decent browser do so.) It's bright, sunny and written in a delightful nonsense language, I can't help but smile whenever I hear it and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
The longest time by Billy Joel
From the album An Innocent Man.
I'm a sucker for Billy Joel and his flirtation with Doo-wop in the mid 80s, Uptown Girl is pretty awesome too, but this song is far prettier and far more impressive, considering Billy Joel did all the voices on it. Admittedly, this song seems to have spawned a thousand Youtube impersonators, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and unlike Uptown Girl, it is yet to be murdered by an Oirish boyband... I'm pretty sure Westlife were created to stop U2 being the most embarrassing band to come from Ireland. (Hi, I'm Bono and I'm planning a lifelong poverty fight and to start, I'm moving my business abroad to pay less tax.)
Days by Kirsty MacColl
(From the album
A cover of a Kinks Track which, unlike the afore mentioned Billy Joel cover version and 95% of covers in general, manages to be better than the original. It makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck at times and it makes me feel more than a little melancholy. Listening to it takes me back to when I first heard it, reminding me of simpler times when I was still in bright eyed and innocent and I was more in love with life. It also reminds me of all the people I've known who I've let go without ever saying thankyou, people who I've just drifted apart from for various reasons and found that it's far too late to thank them now I'm grown up enough to appreciate them more... Still, I'll remember those days all my life and treasure them, it's all I can do.
Still, melancholy thoughts aside, it's a beautiful song and Kirsty's version is outstanding. It shows off just how wonderful a voice she had, it's more than a little haunting given her tragic death, still this is the song that made me fall in love with her work and the song that I point people at when I feel like telling someone just how wonderful an artist she was.
-Ryco.
Monday, 19 April 2010
I hate the Transformers Cartoon.
You know, if anyone ever wanted to torture me, they wouldn't need to need to waterboard me, they wouldn't need to deprive me of sleep, all they'd need to do is make me sit through the original Transformers cartoon as it's horrible on so many levels and manages to make my heart sink whenever I have the misfortune to have to sit through it.
It's a wasted opportunity that somehow managed to run for nearly a hundred episodes, only a handful of them anything approaching watchable. The rest were an ungodly mess, filled with dodgy animation and zero continuity, with nearly all the characterisation provided by the voice actors. In three and a bit seasons, only one character received anything approaching growth, Rodimus Prime, and that was wiped out before the end to make way for more Optimus Prime. I wouldn't mind that much if it weren't for the fact that a huge chunk of Transformers fans want everything to be just like it, or their hazy memories of it, and sadly the people in charge of Transformers Generation 1 fiction want to actively target these people, throwing out interesting stories in favour of making everything like that mess and it breaks my heart. There's are so many potentially interesting stories to tell based on the first generation of Transformers, but people seem to favour an incredibly stunted version where every story ends with Autobots cheering and waving their arms in the air over letting the series have anything approaching depth. It's a lot like expecting all Spiderman or X-men fiction to be based on Spiderman and his Amazing Friends as that was popular back in the day.
In the early 80's, a reasonably decent writer at Marvel, Bob Bundiansky, was assigned the task of fleshing out the Transformers universe, he assigned names, detailed characters and made an interesting universe and it was all ignored by writers with zero passion for their art, writing stories that even they will admit were weak. All the characters intended to have depth were relegated to the role of stooges and crowd filler. I know this was standard for cartoons of the time, but the comics that ran simultaneously handled everything so much better, working from the same material aimed at the same audience.
To give it it's due, it was good at what it was made to do, to sell toys, it was better at that than a lot of it's contemporaries, it was a heck of a lot better than Masters of the Universe, or Go-Bots, but that doesn't make it any more netertaining. Comparing it to the Franco-Japanese productions of the time shows just how poor it was, heck, even comparing it to other Transformers fiction from the time does too. As a kid, I hated the way that ITV treated Transformers, breaking each episode up into small chunks, to make room for more Timmy Mallet, then giving up most of the way through the first season, but as an adult I'm glad they did as it made me seek out the comics which made me forget all about the toon. The comics were decent fiction for the day, that tried to treat intelligence of the audience with some respect which treated Transformers the same as any other Marvel property at the time... Thinking of which, I can't help but feel we'd have gotten much better modern day film adaptations (I am quite fond of the 86 Movie, it falls into the 'handful of good episodes' category) if the rights to Transformers were owned by Marvel, but that's a different rant.
-Ryco.
It's a wasted opportunity that somehow managed to run for nearly a hundred episodes, only a handful of them anything approaching watchable. The rest were an ungodly mess, filled with dodgy animation and zero continuity, with nearly all the characterisation provided by the voice actors. In three and a bit seasons, only one character received anything approaching growth, Rodimus Prime, and that was wiped out before the end to make way for more Optimus Prime. I wouldn't mind that much if it weren't for the fact that a huge chunk of Transformers fans want everything to be just like it, or their hazy memories of it, and sadly the people in charge of Transformers Generation 1 fiction want to actively target these people, throwing out interesting stories in favour of making everything like that mess and it breaks my heart. There's are so many potentially interesting stories to tell based on the first generation of Transformers, but people seem to favour an incredibly stunted version where every story ends with Autobots cheering and waving their arms in the air over letting the series have anything approaching depth. It's a lot like expecting all Spiderman or X-men fiction to be based on Spiderman and his Amazing Friends as that was popular back in the day.
In the early 80's, a reasonably decent writer at Marvel, Bob Bundiansky, was assigned the task of fleshing out the Transformers universe, he assigned names, detailed characters and made an interesting universe and it was all ignored by writers with zero passion for their art, writing stories that even they will admit were weak. All the characters intended to have depth were relegated to the role of stooges and crowd filler. I know this was standard for cartoons of the time, but the comics that ran simultaneously handled everything so much better, working from the same material aimed at the same audience.
To give it it's due, it was good at what it was made to do, to sell toys, it was better at that than a lot of it's contemporaries, it was a heck of a lot better than Masters of the Universe, or Go-Bots, but that doesn't make it any more netertaining. Comparing it to the Franco-Japanese productions of the time shows just how poor it was, heck, even comparing it to other Transformers fiction from the time does too. As a kid, I hated the way that ITV treated Transformers, breaking each episode up into small chunks, to make room for more Timmy Mallet, then giving up most of the way through the first season, but as an adult I'm glad they did as it made me seek out the comics which made me forget all about the toon. The comics were decent fiction for the day, that tried to treat intelligence of the audience with some respect which treated Transformers the same as any other Marvel property at the time... Thinking of which, I can't help but feel we'd have gotten much better modern day film adaptations (I am quite fond of the 86 Movie, it falls into the 'handful of good episodes' category) if the rights to Transformers were owned by Marvel, but that's a different rant.
-Ryco.
Thursday, 15 April 2010
New Lib Dem vote grabber!
Watching Channel 4 news earlier, I was surprised to see that the Lib Dems have a new tactic for the upcoming election. They've started putting Muppets up for election, aiming to get the elusive felt skinned vote! Admittedly they've changed Beaker's name to Danny Alexander MP, but it's undeniably him!It's a bit of a shame that Bunsen Honeydew is working for the Conservatives, under the name of William Hague, but the tories have been putting Muppets up for election since before I was born so it doesn't come as much of a surprise.
I'm left with one important question, which party will Animal represent? Squirrels need answers!
-Ryco.
So...
I needed a place to vent on things that I'm not particularly inclined to post about on Livejournal, be they political or just rambling, so here I am. It should some in handy for when I want to comment on other people's blogs too, which is good.
-Ryco.
-Ryco.
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