So it wasn't my earplugs failing?

(You think it's bad for me, wait until you get a coyote hanging around...)

Assuming that nothing else happened to Addy. She had a troubled life.

Use the butt, and save the bayonet for the really obnoxious instances.

Yeah.

And just cutting wouldn't have worked either. My experience was not the best example. But I was too close to my own story: I needed that more detached opinion.

European.

I slept through Eurovision...

Sleeping through a lot of things, now. What's this Euro 2008 thing? A TV show or an expenses claim?

Crikey, even my brother can explain how the "experts" are getting the hand-ball rule wrong!

This episode just isn't working for me.

In some ways, it's the third volume of a trilogy: things have been set up and characters introduced.

Anyway, the first bit, Chaz in Texas, was good. But it was straight into Chas-as-victim, and no apparent relief. And, bad luck maybe, when I tried other sections there seemed to be nothing else.

I gave up.

You guys are better writers than I'll ever be, but I've had the same reaction to other things. I've seen amateur writers turn out hundreds of pages of OK stuff, and then suddenly lurch off the trail. I've done it myself, but that fanfic zine had an editor willing to edit, and three pages shrank to a couple of lines.

So I think you needed an editor.

Maybe he's dating Florence Ambrose and she's smiling at the nice police officer.

So what are the odds that more than one gamma can appear at the same time?

What does a character look like before they exhibit anomalous talents?

All I think we can be sure of is some sort of psychological stress.

I venture to suggest that all of our favourite characters will have metric shitloads of psychological stress heaped upon them by those things from another world we choose to call "writers". That capering coven of gleeful gutwrenchers, those woe-wrought wenches of pain and grief, could do anything.

Some techie details might help: image size, frame rate, running time, and, most of all, filesize.

Everybody has their price.

The chocolate will be easy but I am advised that the kittens may be a problem....

Can I just say that I am so not going to re-read that episode.

I like to sleep sometimes.

It comes down to leadership.

I don't think it's an idea that film-makers handle well. Maybe they get close with essentially historical situations. North-West Passage passage comes to mind as a maybe. But just hwat did Bromhead and Chard have at Rorke's Drift. What was it that made Guy Gibson, and how much did The Dam Busters draw on Richard Todd's own experience?

And no way is Captain Kirk the father to his crew (not unless we can invoke time travel--he does try, doesn't he.)

What we get are cliches and superficialities. In Which We Serve and The Cruel Sea and The Battle of the River Plate: there are real Captains and Admirals in there, but what reality do we see?

Some comics I struggle with, but I'm not sure it's simply an American/Non-American thing.

My sources may be biased, but what I hear suggests that the big problem for the AMerican comics business is the amount of fan-service for teenage boys.

Mind you, I like Modesty Blaise. (Remember, it's British: form an orderly queue for Willie Garvin.)

Igor, the smelling salts!

Some of you may already know of Tom Smith. The sound-recording on this youtube video is a bit dodgy, but the song is called I Want to be Peter Lorre.

(It's called that because that is the name of the song.)