Catmachine

"Cut their heads off and fill the holes with garlic, that's what you do with vampires." – Terry Pratchett I started another recent blog entry with a Pratchett quote as well. It's almost as if he saw what was coming. Of course, I'm not talking about actual vampires, but the underlying message – that you don't debate evil predatory creatures who think of you or others as less than people, you fight them – is a perennial one which we all need reminding of sometimes. Naturally, in the modern world a lot of effort is put into trying to disabuse us of this notion. For some reason, the powers that be have decided that being evil and selfish (and thinking of the bulk of other people as "things" that can be abused, killed, or oppressed with impunity) is clearly the future. I am not going to get into a debate here whether this is some kind of extreme psychosis or they're just basically evil, the result is the same. We've ended up with a ruling cla...

The problem with fiction is that if it tries to reflect the real world too accurately you run into all sorts of logical problems. This is particularly noticeable with long running TV series - especially soaps - as they strive to reflect the real world more and more. Take Eastenders . Its grim portrait of life in the east end of London is on several times a week at prime time with an omnibus edition on Sundays.  This raises the question - in the Eastenders universe what is on BBC1 at the times Eastenders is shown in ours? Are they watching us? The problem is of course that soaps often are a big part of the viewing public's lives and the omission of itself as fiction from the world it portrays means that a soap such as Eastenders will always have an air of unreality about it. But there's nothing really that could be done about it - the invention of another fictional soap to fill the gap would have the opposite effect and make things appear even further from reality. Some...