It’s such fun! Photos from that restaurant where the book-sniffers went:

Oh what a perfect day. And not a heroin in sight.

Bloody trick or treating chavs. Give em all ASBOs I say. I’m not answering the door to no-one tonight. I’m staying on my chair reading the whole of the internet and watching men kiss on telly. No change there then.

Talking of spooky shit, remember that show Dead Like Me? I do. Ever wonder what happened when its rather fantastic creator Bryan Fuller quit halfway through the first season? And why there was an over-reliance on clip shows? Well… now we know. Thanks to Comic Book Resources…

“It was an ongoing creative battle with the studio, specifically the president. We never saw eye to eye. They budgeted it as a talking-head show without any effects, which was a half million below what it should have been. Which made it impossible to produce and why there are two clip shows in the first season, which is unheard of because it was only 13 episodes. It goes right to the heart of the studio’s perception of what type of show they were producing. Simply put, they had champagne tastes for a beer budget and it couldn’t be done. It was also my first show so I was fighting for everything. I didn’t pick or choose my battles, everything I believed in I fought for, including cast members I believed in, like that whole Rebecca Gayheart debacle. Her leaving the show was because the studio executives had second thoughts because here is this woman who accidentally killed a child in her past and is now playing a Grim Reaper. They got uncomfortable with that and told me to let her go. She’s great on the show and everyone thinks she’s great on the show and everyone likes her as a person. I went to the mat for it and it got really ugly. It was only one of the battles that got really ugly. Finally I got tired of fighting, and “Wonderfalls” got an order, so I left. “

“I talked to several cast members and they called me and told me “they are ruining it!” and I just had to tell them sorry. But I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t watch the show, it was too emotional for me. It was a really traumatic experience, I lost a lot of weight and my hair fell out and thank God it came back, but speaking as someone who has never been in a real war, it was the worst part of my life to deal with a studio and a network who had no love for each other and had two totally different takes on the show – with me getting caught in the middle. I wish I could go back and do it all over, but time is linear. “

“I would have stayed on with the show through its final days. I had very clear ideas on what should happen with the characters. When they were making choices, I would scratch my head. They missed the joke on a lot of things. The biggest thing was making her father straight. He was going to be gay and around episode six or seven where she discovers he was gay and she learns to value her life even more because hers was a life that wasn’t meant to be because her father was gay and wasn’t wired to procreate. So the life that she lost is much more valuable to her. It affected her life and her story and made it mean that much more. And then they threw it out the window even though there were major seeds planted in the episodes when I was there.”

“I think (George) would have continued to do the things she was doing. I wanted to have a lot more fun with the genre. I wanted to be able to cut to 20 years in the future and have George looking like George and still carrying out her missions. As far as specifics go, she wasn’t going to meet her maker – but that wouldn’t stop her from trying. I was going to bring Rebecca Gayheart’s character back at the beginning of season 2 and have her fall out of the sky and send her and George on this mission. Here’s a grim reaper who returns from the afterlife and has something to say about it, and the question would become how the characters could “storm the castle” and come back. But those episodes were not meant to be.”

More from the marvellous Mister Fuller tomorrow. He did Wonderfalls too, you know. And he does Heroes now. Bleeding hell, guv’nor!

As it appears to be Halloween I have locked Derek Acorah in the cupboard in case he starts having one of his panto moments and starts wailing at me. I have still not forgiven him for the time he tried to strangle poor Yvette Fielding in that haunted house or even when he called Danniella Westbrook a whore when possessed by a nasty man from The Daily Mail. He has been possessed for the last twenty minutes by a charlatan in a white suit who pretends to hear ghostly voices in his head via a Native American Indian spirit guide and then spins it out into a TV show, going a bit mental when the audience gets bored. This man he is communing with just so happens to be a middle aged scouser with a hair gel problem. Which is handy…

I love Mailwatch. It watches the idiots so you don’t have to!

Today I learnt from the Mail that if you live somewhere nice you pay more council tax than if you lived in a shithole. This is because if your house is in a nice area it will be worth more money than some squalid chav council house.

You do the math(ematics).

Shocking.

Do they just like getting their knickers in a twist about nothing?

It’s political correctness gone mad! Or is it just a load of old bollocks in the form of news?

Loooooong long day. Went to the pub and a Chinese restaurant with work folks to celebrate five years of a certain bookshop. Got talked to by a pissed woman in the pub who thought it was almost closing time when it was only 6:30. What with the clocks going back she was even more pissed than she realised. Weirdo!

The restaturant (Tai Pan) seems to not exist on the internet although it was real. It had a display case thing of cheesecakes with skewed perspective because as I got nearer to them they remained tiny. It was like Father Dougal and the cows all over again… Photographs may appear here tomorrow as the usual suspects had flashy cameras…

I ate tofu and seaweed. What the hell was that all about?

So… we watched Torchwood episode 3 with some nice Polish vodka which made me shout at the telly a bit too much… If I was Jack I would have issued that Gwen with at least her second written warning by now. And a couple for that cockney twat Owen too… Do they ever learn? Why doesn’t Jack sleep? Is his big secret tied into that quote from The Doctor back when he and Rose were on that rare off-planet trip? Will there be some sort of family reunion in the future? How will they get through all thirteen episodes by Christmas? When will Ianto do something a little less butler-y?

I found this image after I had written the above text but it sums up my rambling better than a hundred words or whatever that lame phrase is:

And so concludes this week’s health and safety training.

… I would be Cher. But I don’t look like a dog’s dinner and I have all my own original parts.

I did turn back time last night though, what with them pesky clocks getting turned back an hour. Cue random chaos today in the real world where foolish folk forget what time it is and cock things up. Probably…

Talking of time (and space)…

It’s Torchwood Declassified Part Two!

Question: What do the following have in common?

‘While Europe is becoming increasingly secularized, the rise of religious fundamentalism, whether in the Middle East or Middle America, is dramatically and dangerously dividing opinion around the world. In America, and elsewhere, a vigorous dispute between ‘intelligent design’ and Darwinism is seriously undermining and restricting the teaching of science. In many countries religious dogma from medieval times still serves to abuse basic human rights such as women’s and gay rights. And all from a belief in a God whose existence lacks evidence of any kind.’ (from synopsis on Amazon. Sounds like my kind of book!)

God- not-bothering surprising best selling (in my lowly bookshop) book The God Delusion where we get more of the ‘religion is mental and science is great’ spiel from that Richard Dawkins bloke…

and

Doctor-bothering Time Lady Romana Version 2.0 who travelled in time and space with Tom Baker as The Doctor before getting married to Tom Baker as Lalla Ward which was who she was in the real world until she left the show when Adric turned up and then they got divorced in the real world anyway…

No, they both don’t have Adric as a MySpace friend….

They are in fact Husband and Wife. How boffinny must their bedtime chats be?

Finally! Issue 26 of Planetary is out now.

Yes, I am a geek.

Residents fear Argos store will ‘lower the tone’ of town
Daily Mail 27th October 2006
Residents horrified by the prospect of an Argos store opening in their picture postcard town have launched a campaign amid fears it will “lower the tone” of the place. Hundreds of people have signed a petition after news circulated that the town’s Waitrose supermarket is to close and be replaced by a branch of the catalogue store. The site of the controversy in affluent Lymington, Hants, has caused outcry among shopkeepers and protective residents who fear it will attract the wrong calibre of person. Now they hope to block plans for the John Lewis group, which owns Waitrose, to sell the lease on the prominent site in the heart of the tranquil New Forest town.
Campaign leader and owner of Amanini women’s clothing boutique which is opposite, Pippa Redman, said: “Everyone in the area is absolutely horrified by the news. The word is going round and there are literally hundreds of people who want to fight against it. I have now started a petition which several hundred people have signed. Something must be done to keep Argos out and stop us becoming just another clone town. Most people round here have never even heard of Argos. The demographic here is simply not right for it. This is a beautiful old Georgian market town, we have lovely little shops and boutiques selling flowers, antiques and clothes – Argos would be completely out of place. They are talking about putting this store right on the street where everyone can see it. It will stand out like a beacon. Once you get started with the likes of Argos then the next thing you know there’s a Currys and all the other names like that – it would lower the tone of Lymington. We already have a Woolworths in the centre of the town and people who want to order things of that ilk can shop there. It’s a very ugly building as it is. At least as a Waitrose it is subtle and attracts a certain calibre of customer. But an Argos would lower the tone and drive out that calibre of people because they would stop shopping here or moving here to live.”
Miss Redman, 53, now intends to send the petition to Argos and the John Lewis group to protest against the potential deal. She added: “John Lewis has a choice here and they should be dismissing Argos. They take the moral high ground by saying that their eggs are chosen from this particular farm or that their meat comes from this source. But that moral high ground is being completely turned on its head by considering selling the lease to someone like Argos. I went round all the shops in the area to tell them because if and when Argos move in, it’s highly likely that all those shops will no longer be in existence. I fear that an Argos store could spell the end for some of the small businesses operating in the town and change the character of Lymington.”

… and breathe…
Phew. What a snotty bitch Miss Redman (53) is! I wonder why Miss Redman (53) never found a husband? And if most people there haven’t heard of Argos why would they be so upset about the idea? Wny is this even being taken seriously? What is wrong with people? I hope they bulldoze the whole bloody high street and biuld a council estate on it. Witch! I hate humans sometimes!