The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘television’ Category

SKY ONE on Mon­day 24th May 2010 at 5am Lon­don time, its being broad­cast at the same time view­ers on the West Coast of Amer­ica will be watch­ing. How cool is that?

I will be awake and watch­ing, what about you?

Hey fuck­ers! I’m blog­ging from my iPhone again.

I am hav­ing a rather dull and dreary night at work with pre­cious lit­tle to actu­ally do.

Cov­er­ing a war is lively at first and then you set­tle into a rou­tine. Yes I am as cal­lous and jaded as I sound. I have been cov­er­ing wars for around 20 years, they’re all pretty much the same. Peo­ple die, lots of them.

Life is so frag­ile and we are all so break­able. Its a won­der more of us aren’t killed more often.

The thing about cov­er­ing wars from a dis­tance, as I’ve mostly done, is you get to see some of the most har­row­ing scenes of suf­fer­ing. By the time it arrives on the tv in your liv­ing room, its been san­i­tized and cen­sored, to pro­tect you from images you are likely to find distressing.

I strongly dis­agree with that. You have just as much right to see the uncen­sored hor­rors as I do and my media col­leagues should not be deny­ing you from see­ing the truth.

I don’t find strong images offen­sive, but I do think war and the need­less slaugh­ter of civil­ians is extremely offensive.

I guess I picked the wrong job. Or rather the wrong job chose me!

(blogged from my iPhone)

Seven days into the brand spankin’ new year and I am already filled with opti­mism and hope. And by opti­mism and hope, I really mean depres­sion and despair.

All my tv wants to show me is that nasty shit going on in the mideast. Why do they keep mak­ing sequels to that movie? I’ve seen it all before. That said, there’s some­thing more upset­ting about it this time. Its whole­sale slaugh­ter at an indus­trial scale and it sick­ens me.

I just wish I could change the chan­nel but I really wanna see how it all turns out. Maybe some­one could tip me off just before Rambo arrives and illus­trates the point­less­ness rather than glory of war­fare. And by Rambo, of course I mean Gandhi.

I’m bored to the point of dis­gust at see­ing chil­dren mur­dered and maimed. I can’t be the only one who has seen more than enough of this shit. Why don’t they all just stop?

Closer to home, or rather right here at home, north Lon­don has been sub­merged in sub-zero tem­per­a­tures for what seems like a few weeks now, with each suc­ces­sive night pro­vid­ing another record-breaking low. Brrrrrrrrrrrr!

The ther­mome­ter in my car hit a rather chilly –2 yes­ter­day, which was an all time record low for me and it hasn’t gone above +1 in over a week.

We’re not used to this sort of cold here in Lon­don and its bring­ing every­one down, espe­cially with no respite in sight. All we need is some snow to com­plete this win­tery hell and trust me, I’m not wish­ing for it.

And the econ­omy is so far into the toi­let it can taste the salt in the ocean.

Weed is going be returned to Class B from its present posi­tion in the more appro­pri­ate and rec­om­mended by gov’t advi­sors, Class C. That really sucks.

Things are indeed look­ing dis­tinctly bleak as 2009 begins.

Even Apple let me down yes­ter­day, with a Mac­World keynote devoid of any new toys for me to pur­chase. My credit card was revved up and ready, but it had nowhere to go.

Remem­ber, if it weren’t for cool con­sumer elec­tron­ics and soft drugs, I would have no joy in my life.

And its my birth­day in a cou­ple weeks, I could really do with­out that.

Oh moan, moan, moan, moan, moan!

There’s was an avalanche of media bull­shit this week over a doc­u­men­tary aired on SKY REAL LIVES which showed a man with motor neu­rone dis­ease tak­ing his own life at a Swiss clinic in 2006.

Switzer­land is cur­rently the only coun­try in the world which allows for­eign­ers to visit and par­take in a spot of assisted sui­cide. Go Switzerland!

I say the media was full of bull­shit because most out­lets con­cen­trated on the issue of whether or not you should show the “moment of death” on tele­vi­sion, for fear of “glam­ouris­ing death”.

WTF?

I haven’t seen the entire doc­u­men­tary, but I have seen some clips and how could show­ing a man with an absolutely hor­ri­ble dis­ease end­ing his life in any way glam­ourise death? There were no Hol­ly­wood films stars or strip­pers cheer­ing him on, the room he did it in wasn’t kit­ted out in fur rugs and leather sofas and they didn’t even have a live band.

There was no glam­our at all, but then there was absolutely noth­ing glam­ourous about it.

Tak­ing your own life is a seri­ous deci­sion, cer­tainly the most seri­ous deci­sion any indi­vid­ual can take and it was clear this poor man delib­er­ated for a very long time before mak­ing this final decision.

The debate should not have been about whether or not they should have shown this on tele­vi­sion, but why more coun­tries don’t have sys­tems like they do in Switzerland.

Why is it against the law to pro­vide the ulti­mate relief and end the suf­fer­ing of another human being? We do it for dogs and cats and horses — do they mat­ter more than people?

There are some rather hor­ri­ble mal­adies and afflic­tions out there which are hor­ren­dous and could cause immea­sur­able suf­fer­ing and pain to the per­son affected.

A slow, pro­tracted death is one of my big­ger fears, but that fear is expo­nen­tially exac­er­bated by the fact that I know if I wanted to choose to end the suf­fer­ing, it would not be pos­si­ble because of our archaic view of euthanasia.

The peo­ple most unsur­pris­ingly opposed to euthana­sia tend to be reli­gious nuts who believe only god’s will can decide when your life ends.

What a fuck­ing bunch of fuck­ing bull­shit. If that’s true, then any­one with a gun is god, because they can choose to end anyone’s life with rel­a­tive ease.

I have a real prob­lem tak­ing any­one seri­ously who is deeply reli­gious to the point of it cloud­ing their every thought and opin­ion, espe­cially when those mis­guided views increase the suf­fer­ing and pain of others.

That’s one of religion’s spe­cial­ity though, caus­ing oth­ers to need­lessly suffer.

I’ve recently been in touch with a dis­tant rela­tion of mine, who was in charge of dis­pens­ing a small stipend to myself and all my cousins fol­low­ing the pass­ing of a beloved aunt of mine.

When she wrote to me, her let­ter was pep­pered with all sorts of reli­gious ref­er­ences. I half expected her clos­ing salu­ta­tion to be “Yours in Christ” and was relieved that it wasn’t.

I had to really reign myself in when I replied to her, by keep­ing my sec­u­lar human­ist views at bay, though I couldn’t resist wish­ing her a “happy hol­i­days” in response to her “merry xmas”. Of course, she wrote out the entire word and cap­i­talised it.

I have noth­ing against my dis­tant rel­a­tive, the fact is I don’t really know her, hav­ing maybe met her twice before the age of 13, but its the way in which reli­gious peo­ple think every­one else should be equally reli­gious, and not just that but we should fol­low their reli­gion, because the other ones, even vari­a­tions on Chris­tian­ity, will send you straight to hell.

There is no hell. Hell is other people.

No, hell is being forced to live with a debil­i­tat­ing and ter­mi­nal con­di­tion, need­less suf­fer­ing a long, drawn out death because the law won’t let one be the archi­tect of one’s own fate.

The law is an ass. Or is that asshole?

The idea of my mind, my per­son­al­ity, the inter­nal bits of my brain con­tin­u­ing to func­tion as they do now, while being trapped in my body, wracked with pain, or worse paral­y­sis is a fate worse than death. Com­pared to any of that, death would be a trip to Disneyland.

And for all you reli­gious nuts out there, let me ask you this: If heaven is so god­damn great, why can’t we let the sick peo­ple arrive a lit­tle ear­lier than expected? Surely a just and lov­ing god would wel­come them with open arms.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t make us suffer.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t let us die.

If there were a god, there would be no need for heaven, because heaven would be here on earth and we would all already be angels.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if some­one chose to end their life because of an intol­er­a­ble existence.

If there were a god, I wouldn’t get to post all of this on the inter­net and he’d have a stern word or two for me.

There is no god.

Why not be your own god? Why not deter­mine your own fate?

They say you make your own luck and I believe that’s true. I believe in self-actualisation and the power of an indi­vid­ual to over­come obsta­cles and suc­ceed in anything.

If the obsta­cle you’re encoun­ter­ing is insur­mount­able, then the only path to suc­cess is retreat.

If you’re dying a hor­ri­ble death, the only way to min­imise death’s vic­tory over you is to limit the amount of time you spend dying.

I thought about this a lot when I was ill last sum­mer, espe­cially when I could hardly walk and spent over a week try­ing to sleep sit­ting up on my sofa.

I imag­ined quite vividly that my con­di­tion could have been per­ma­nent and degen­er­a­tive, and what I would do in that situation.

I think you can work out the answer.

I can’t wait for the net­works to call the win­ner of this elec­tion, so I am doing it myself.

It’s 10pm east­ern time, 0300gmt here in north Lon­don and I hearby declare Barack Hus­sein Obama the win­ner of the 2008 pres­i­den­tial election.

Based on every­thing I’ve absorbed in the last half hour, there’s no way McCain could reach the magic 270 elec­toral votes.

Remem­ber, you read it here first, fuckers!

the northlon­don­hippy
0301gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

Penn­syl­va­nia has gone to Obama.

Appar­ently that’s a good indi­ca­tion of where the race is going.

Also, it is look­ing good in Florida, which as you may recall has been a prob­lem­atic state for the Democ­rats in pre­vi­ous elections…especially 2000 for poor ol’ Al Gore.

Even this close to a result, I am still ner­vous and unsure.

I’m still alter­nat­ing between CNN and FoxNews, though I def­i­nitely pre­fer CNN. CNN has been high­light­ing viewer reports of var­i­ous vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties across Amer­ica, with a really cool graphic map. The more orange an area is, the more they are screw­ing with people’s right to a free and fair vote.

And don’t for­get the holograms!

It’s just gone 9pm on the east coast of Amer­ica (0200gmt here in north Lon­don) and accord­ing to CNN, Obama is now lead­ing lead­ing McCain with about 3 elec­toral votes to one. That’s a pretty good mar­gin, let’s hope it holds!

the northlon­don­hippy
02:02gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

It’s all too slow, they are being too con­ser­v­a­tive and cau­tious in their predictions.

Tell me who’s winning!

As of now, Obama is up, up, up!

All you need to do is look at the peo­ple at the two can­di­dates “vic­tory” ral­lies. In Chicago, where as many as one mil­lion peo­ple are expected, it already looks like one hell of a party, while in Phoenix, the gath­er­ing appears to be more like a wake.

At this point, does any­one really think McCain can pull this off? Even McCain him­self looked glum as he arrived in Phoenix a short while ago.

My tv view­ing is set­tling into a rou­tine, switch­ing mainly between CNN (who I think have the edge) and FoxNews, with the occa­sional stop on the BBC. SKY seems a bit slow and looks a bit cheap and the BBC is actu­ally doing a pretty good job, but the Amer­i­can net­works have the resources and speed to do the story justice.

And what a story its going to turn out to be!

the northlon­don­hippy
01:25gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

It might be closer than the pre-polling sug­gests, but I am already get­ting the feel­ing that its going to be a good night for Obama and his party.

I’ve been flip­ping between:

- FoxNews
– CNN
– MS-NBC
– SKY
– BBC

They all have giant sets and really whizzy graph­ics, espe­cially the Amer­i­can net­works. They’re all being cau­tious in their pro­jec­tions, which is sen­si­ble, but not very exciting.

CNN win on the tech­nol­ogy front, Wolf Blitzer is talk­ing to actual, life-like holo­grams of peo­ple in other parts of the coun­try. Spooky!

The key states at this hour remain too close to call, but that in itself could be telling us some­thing, as the key states in pre­vi­ous elec­tions were firmly in the Repub­li­can column.

The inter­net may be my per­sonal medium of choice for doing my own thing, but at heart I am a tele­vi­sion viewer. I’m split­ting my time between my desk­top com­puter and my tv, though as this thing heats up, I’ll prob­a­bly switch to surf­ing on my iPhone while I remain on the sofa. Like you needed to know that.

- the northlon­don­hippy
– 00:25gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

If you didn’t watch last night’s final pres­i­den­tial debate, here’s what you missed:

At least that’s how it looked when I was watch­ing it…