Transistorized

Bad news everyone, etc

This afternoon, between 12:30pm – 6pm, Sky1/Sky1 HD are showing three of the four Futurama movies. (Missing out Bender’s Game, but for various reasons, if you were going to not show one of them, that’s probably the one I’d drop.) Now, you’d think that would be difficult to mess up, yes?

Don’t be stupid. This is television. They can mess up anything.

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Why I love Strike It Lucky/Rich Despite the Game Mechanics Themselves Actually Not Being Very Good At All

Something I recorded off the telly last week. It really comes alive three minutes in, although the start is worth watching purely so you get the amusing impression later on:


#He’s fucked his endcap up, never mind…

Well, things have been quiet around here for a while, haven’t they? Whilst we prepare for upcoming “stuff”, take a look at something I posted on Twitter a while back, from 70s Bill Maynard vehicle Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggitt. (Which, incidentally, has a dodgy pilot, is really good for the first series, and then sadly tails off a bit.) Yep, you’re waiting around for the Yorkshire endcap at the end, although feel free to enjoy the end theme, which proves that Blackadder II isn’t the only sitcom which had different lyrics for the end of each episode…

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#We’re so happy to have you around…

Immigration. Barely a day goes past without it hitting the news. I would link you to examples, but I’m presuming – if you’re the usual kind of wet liberal that I suspect visits this site – that you might wish to take a break from all of that for five minutes.

Take a listen, then, to the following jingle, from PAMS Series 28 – made for the radio station WABC in 1964:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

PAMS Series 28, Cut #15

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The Art of the Title Sequence: George & Mildred

George and Mildred Logo

In the first of our guest articles here on Transistorized, Tanya Jones talks about one of her favourite sitcoms…

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Raking Over Old Tweets From 2008 From Someone Who Doesn’t Even Exist Now

Last year, a Ruby programmer called why the lucky stiff disappeared. Not being part of the Ruby community, the whole story still fascinated me; see the posts Eulogy to _why and The Impermanence, Karma, and Bad Behavior of Why The Lucky Stiff for two opposing views on the subject.

The other day, I decided to see whether there had been any sign of him. Short answer: no. Long answer: no, there hasn’t. But in my travels, I noticed this tweet from him, which a lot of people seem to like:

“when you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.”

It’s such a deliciously seductive idea. And yet it’s so fundamentally wrong.

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Don’t Worry, Iggle-Piggle

“The night is black,
And the stars are bright,
And the sea is dark and deep…
But someone I know is safe and snug,
And they’re drifting off to sleep.

Round and round, a little boat, no bigger than your hand,
Out on the ocean, far away from land.
Take the little sail down, light the little light,
This is the way to the garden in the night.”

Why do I love In The Night Garden so much?

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More Than Meets the Eye

I never watched Transformers as a kid. As a now-28-year-old male geek, this is tantamount to sacrilege, but it’s true. I’d avidly watch Wacaday, and then lose interest in Transformers shortly after the opening theme tune. The only eight year old boy in the world who found giant robots and battles boring. And as for the toys, I was too busy playing offices to notice.

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Lookalikes

Dear Sir,

I was on the Argos website the other day, and noticed a startling similarity between the new Argos logo, and the Complico logo from The Peter Serafinowicz Show.

New Argos logo
Complico
Complico Logo
Argos


Could they by any chance be related?

Yours,
John Hoare

P.S. God, it’s shit.

(With apologies to @divaschematic.)


The Young Ones: Building the Fourth Wall

MIKE: This calls for a celebration. Vyv, throw another record player on the fire.
VYVYAN: Oh, certainly, Michael.
RICK: You bastard! That’s my record player!
MIKE: [to Vyv] You said it was your record player.
VYVYAN: No, I didn’t, Mike. I said “Let’s throw Rick’s record player on the fire, that’ll be good for a laugh.”
MIKE: Oh, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it is yours, Rick.

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