The Prisoner

Today, for some reason, I felt a sudden urge to go even further back in time than usual, to a time just before the Beatles. It was the time of that great Patrick McGoohan series, The Prisoner.

One of the quotes that kept yammering at me was this one: "Unlike me, many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment and will die here like rotten cabbages." It was a dark time, the late 60s — but it was also a fantastic time of baroque invention around the theme of Orwell's 1984.

I have a sudden sense of loss for those early TV shows — The Prisoner, Ultraman, Space: 1999, The Man from UNCLE, Mission: Impossible, The Wild, Wild West, Sapphire and Steel, The Avengers, and of course, the early Doctor Who. There are at least a dozen more I could mention. Somehow, the sheer quantity of interesting TV programmes seems larger than it is today, even in the days of cable TV.

Sigh.

Science Centre?

I brought my niece, a very intelligent and somewhat perspicacious child, to the local Science Centre. She had a lot of fun, and although she was disappointed at certain things, showed unusual and precocious maturity in choosing to highlight the positives in her report to her parents and grandparents.

She was very impressed by the Omnimax theatre, although she was sad at not getting a planetarium show; she enjoyed the Wild Ocean film that we got instead. She asked to see stars, but since it was daylight, accepted the fact that the observatory (small and often treated to horrible back-scatter from the high-rise public housing and industrial buildings nearby) would not be showing her anything of the sort. So we had a look at the Astronomy section.

First real disappointment. Shoddy exhibits, disabled functions, uninspiring and almost star-less. Not what you would call astronomy at all; more like a consequence of economy, it seemed. I felt sad for her, and for the Science Centre as it once had been.

The rest of the place wasn't that bad. We hit the Kinetic Garden next, with lots of things that young and agile people could have fun with. She had fun, I had fun. What was disappointing was that some of the exhibits were rather badly maintained, encrusted with lime and dirt and sometimes out of alignment. She took it in her stride. I am sometimes very happy for the innocence of youth, but her experience could have been better.

The local Science Centre sees a lot of throughput. For a population (including tourists) of perhaps 10 million (or more), it loses outright to New York and London though. I wonder why exhibits are so much better maintained in other cities which have the same claim to be world-class. I question the validity of 'world class' as an appropriate term to describe a city with 3 universities of which the best seems to be ranked about 30th in the world, and whose Science Centre and museums and other institutions of cultural knowledge transmission must be ranked about 200th or so.

But you know what? My niece enjoyed herself, and so I did too. We had fun. We could have had more fun without the tackiness and the missing pieces, but we had enough fun for one day. I just wish that we had a proper Science Santa...

Octadecane

Bad pun, for those who can spot it... very sorry! But tonight, I was eighteen years old again. The music was ABBA, Duran Duran, the really old stuff, and more. And four hours of dancing to stuff like 'Saturday Night Fever' and 'I Will Survive' and all the things that were new when I was young.

The funniest part must have been when they played 'It's Raining Men' by the Weathergirls. A bunch of us perfectly respectable men, not one of who was under the age of 41, and some of who were far older, jumped hyperkinetically onto the floor at the appropriate moments. The performances entertained everyone. It surprised me how fit some of us still were. Haha!

I am sure that various young dancers must be laughing their heads off by now at the idea. Oh well.

Calefare

This has always been an intriguing word to me. In the entertainment industry hereabouts, it has come to mean 'a bit-part character' (or charitably, 'a member of the supporting cast'). But it has the look of a word from some Romance language in it, and if it were Latin, it would probably mean 'to keep warm' – just as California means 'a warm oven'. Used in a modern world, perhaps calefare would mean 'a hot ticket', or 'stuff you eat which has a high energy value'. In its present context, it probably means 'seat-warmer'. That's the thing about neologisms; you never know when they might rise up from their primordial past and bite you.

Case in point, the late and unlamented airtropolis, that bastard child of 'metropolis' and 'airport' which some idiot bureaucrat thought would be a good idea. Never ever combine different languages in the same word in such a way that they look terribly disjoint. You cannot help the reader to suspend his disbelief when you do that, whether or not the reader is completely ignorant about the languages concerned; some things just look too wrong.

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Note: Classical Latin's equivalent of calefare does exist; originally, calefacere meant 'to make heat' or 'to generate warmth'. Classical Greek's equivalent of the terrible airtropolis would probably be aeropolis, 'city of (the) air'.

Creative Literature

I must admit I've been reading again. It tires and exhilarates the mind and body. It's a bit like full-contact swordplay.

But my two most time-wasting link additions are bonkworld and the great F&SF blog La Explanada de Avente which introduced bonkworld to me. Wherein lies their fascination?

Well, bonkworld has weird stuff, like this amazing tool amongst others. It will take the chore out of reading Dostoevsky. If only they had one for Tolstoy... and of course, it has nifty little plays like this one, which should have been a Theory of Knowledge introduction sketch.

La Explanada de Avente, on the other hand, is pure entertainment and commentary. It's also bilingual, written by a person named Tim R Mortiss. You have to suspect such a name though. It sounds too much like this.

Random Thoughts

Sometimes your brain just spills over. They aren't even stubs. Maybe shrubs.

Why is she 1/12 now? Is she inching her way to some sort of apotheosis? Or is she just bigger than when she was 1/15, and of that, a flyhalf to boot? Ah, who am I to complain (explain?) - I used to be a hooker myself.

Why do some people have such expressive lower lips? It isn't as if they need them. Sometimes God hands out His bonuses in such a quirky way. Or is the plural of bonus actually boni? Viruses -> viri, then. But vir means 'man'. Argh.

Nobody remembers that old TV series, That's Entertainment. But someone seems to have reinvented it. Oh ho ho. I enjoyed myself. And someone, when I learnt it was accidental, it tasted even more delicious.

What is the difference between suaku and ulu? Wait a minute, I actually know this. Wow, I will pass this test with flying colours! Errm. It isn't a test. It's only a survey. I am so disappointed.

I no longer make much fun of the boys. I have made fun of so many of them for so many years. And that includes myself.