R.I.P. THREAD

[Matthew Shute]

Bowen was all right, but Bullseye was part and parcel of the long, dark teatimes of the soul that were Sunday afternoons spent at my grandparents as a child, along with Songs of Praise and nothing to read except The People's Friend, if you'd forgotten to take a book with you.

Those Sunday evenings of the soul are no joke. For me there was usually some awful reckoning at school in the morning (or so I imagined), going to bed will just bring that closer, the time's creeping inexorably on, and the TV schedules are a harrowing wasteland of despair. Yet here I am, against all reason or sanity, staring at these images just to forestall the inevitable. Now here comes the theme tune to Last of the Summer Wine again...

*shudders*

But what about those fantastic prizes?

You weren't there, man. You weren't there.

[UncertainSloth]

not sure it gets terribly better as you get older...just you have more housework to do...and schoolwork, if i;ve procrastinated all weekend....but then i suppose that's never changed....

[Fallible]

Bowen was all right, but Bullseye was part and parcel of the long, dark teatimes of the soul that were Sunday afternoons spent at my grandparents as a child, along with Songs of Praise and nothing to read except The People's Friend, if you'd forgotten to take a book with you.

Those Sunday evenings of the soul are no joke. For me there was usually some awful reckoning at school in the morning (or so I imagined), going to bed will just bring that closer, the time's creeping inexorably on, and the TV schedules are a harrowing wasteland of despair. Yet here I am, against all reason or sanity, staring at these images just to forestall the inevitable. Now here comes the theme tune to Last of the Summer Wine again...

*shudders*

But what about those fantastic prizes?

You weren't there, man. You weren't there.

This post is basically all yes.

[Calilasseia]

Sunday television back in the 1970s and 1980s was dismal here in the UK. After polishing off one's Sunday dinner, the usual offerings included such fun items as The Virgininan or The High Chaparral during the afternoon, before moving on to some piece of crap game show in the run up to the god-botherer slot, which you couldn't escape from on any of the measly three channels we had until Channel 4 turned up.

Songs Of Praise was every bit as brain-numbing and Home Counties Tory as it sounds. Mostly because it continued to peddle a MIss Marple on Mogadon view of the world long after its sell-by date. A view that was relentlessly soporific and tedious, due to the fact that the churches visited for filming were usually snooty, stuck-up and rectally self-inserted caricatures of Affluent Toryshire, with pews stuffed to the brim by Hyacinth Buckets trying to blag their 15 minutes of Warholian fame. Pure, unadulterated televisual knob cheese. If you saw a black face in the congregation, some shitty Little Englander would write a complaint to the BBC, who would then see to it that the next half dozen episodes were whiter than a fucking Persil ad.

Though I'm tempted to suggest that the BBC's Religious Broadcasting Unit was secretly hijacked by atheists, who deliberately set out to make religious broadcasting even less appetising than that photo of dissected kidney stones that's recently been doing the rounds on Twitter. If so, they succeeded in spades, because the ratings for Songs Of Praise were routinely so crap, you'd have to exert truly special effort to do worse. Though it's still orders of magnitude better than the psychotic tripe pumped out by American religious cable TV, with its "you too can have eternal salvation for $99 plus postage" travesties belted out in screeching nasal voices by sleazy megachurch "pastors", whose careers come to a sudden end when the FBI find they have naked boys chained in their basements.

[Animavore]

Fundies fundamentaling over Hawking.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nosacredco ... n-hawking/

[Ironclad]

"let's have a look at what you could have won.."
Yeah thanks, Jim.

Sundays through my childhood, I remember it always raining. I thought it was a feature of the coast but it was always Sunday weather. I was once told that it was in fact something to do with the Saturday into Sunday break in work from heavy industry and fewer pollutants going up into the sky, allowing the rain to fall as it couldn't in the week. Also visits to the elderly lady who lived in a creepy dark house up the street... brrr, soft Rich Tea biscuits and wrinkled kisses! God help us

[Regina]

[Skinny Puppy]

Jeremy Siepmann (16 January 1942 – 6 April 2016)
I know this is old, but I just found out that he’d passed away.

I’ve purchased almost all of his audio CDs about music and loved them. I was just searching for some more of them when I read his obit. A truly great loss since he made composers’ lives so real in his recordings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Siepmann

His ‘Life and Works’ series is excellent! I have them all.

https://www.naxos.com/person/Jeremy_Siepmann_1400/1400.htm

[Mike_L]

Good riddance...

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

[UncertainSloth]

pretty much the sentiment in this house as well...

[Scot Dutchy]

Good riddance...

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

I cant agree more Mike.

[zulumoose]

News is of course full of "Mama Africa" sentiments, though they do sometimes mention the "controversy". All quotes I have heard have been entirely positive about her. I can't forget the "boxes of matches" speech she gave in 1986, endorsing burning people alive as a means of liberation. Nothing she has done since has altered my view of her as an absolutely vile human being. A friend of mine also remembers her paying for a massive lavish weekend of guests and champagne at a luxury hotel with a cheque from the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.

[Fallible]

[Mike_L]

News is of course full of "Mama Africa" sentiments, though they do sometimes mention the "controversy". All quotes I have heard have been entirely positive about her.

Yep, this is what I call the transformative power of the eulogy... it's ability to turn a sh*t into a saint.

I can't forget the "boxes of matches" speech she gave in 1986, endorsing burning people alive as a means of liberation.

Indeed. Not only was she an enthusiastic proponent of 'necklace' murders, but she also took it upon herself in the late 1980s to conduct kangaroo court sessions at her home. Aided by a group of thugs called the 'Mandela United Football Club', she tortured and 'disappeared' people who were suspected of being "police informants". Fourteen yr-old Stompie Seipei was murdered by "footballer" Jerry Richardson, who testified that the killing took place on Winnie's instructions. Other victims, like Lolo Sono, simply went "missing". As described here, the so-called 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission' was instrumental in ensuring that Winnie never faced accountability for her misdeeds.

Nothing she has done since has altered my view of her as an absolutely vile human being.

Truly, Winnie is somebody for whom the 'R.I.P.' in the thread title can stand for "Roast in Perdition"... or "Rot in Putrescence".

[zulumoose]

News 24 current poll results:-

Voting Booth
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela will be best remembered for:

Her role in the struggle
19% 2253 votes

Being the mother of the nation
7% 893 votes

Being a law unto herself
74% 8906 votes

[Mike_L]

That last one (that Winnie was "a law unto herself") was something that Warrant Officer Odendaal and Constable Twala found out the hard way back in 2011...
* Cops abused after pulling Winnie's car over

Odious specimen of humanity she truly was.

[Calilasseia]

Meanwhile, Darts champion Eric Bristow has died of a heart attack aged 60. He died after collapsing on stage, whilst taking part in the PDC Premier League at the Echo Arena in Liverpool yesterday.

[aban57]

Today France lost 2 people :

Singer Jacques Higelin

Veronique Colucci, ex-wife of the very regretted Coluche, administrator of an NGO that delivers every winter 135 millions meals to poor people in France. For the record, France has about 67 millions people.

[UncertainSloth]

Meanwhile, Darts champion Eric Bristow has died of a heart attack aged 60. He died after collapsing on stage, whilst taking part in the PDC Premier League at the Echo Arena in Liverpool yesterday.

jim bowen, then bristow? still a case of the non-dart player goes first, then?...

[Animavore]

Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata dies at 82

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43664515