John Mortell’s blog

An oddity I was just listening to, this was a Columbia (I assume the precursor to the film company) production with Orson Wells and a broadway group of Dracula. Found it on a cd from a friend. It’s a bit short at only an hour but well worth a listen. Definately something for those who feel that ‘modern’ productions of classics are somewhat lacking….

At least in this flash. Thanks to Eugene for the link…

I’m not a huge wrestling fan these days – however, back in the day I used to watch it quite a bit. Ended up seeing some older wrestling stuff last night and realised that the old WWF symbol had been blurred out of sight. I knew that the ‘real’ WWF – the world wildlife fund, had managed to get the now ‘WWE’ to stop using the WWF name, but I didn’t realise that this extended back into the past. Does anyone know of similar happenings? Is this normal is copyright disputes?

Well, I got my ‘four faces of violence’ essay done – now onto the other four….

Heard an interesting discription of the effect that Sinn Fein people have last night ”they’re like syphilis – at the start its just inconvienient and then it begins to rot your brain”

Got referred to this from Warren Ellis’ bad signal mailing list. While he talks about the method’s involved in how the shades going on has a specific beat / dramatic theme, I’m just horrified by how painful and yet suprisingly engrossing this is….

Doing an essay on the four faces of violence -intentionality, unintentionality, acts and omissions. Anyone know of any good documents etc?

Having not drunk that much in a while today has proven somewhat painful.

However I do want to talk about death of a president which I saw last night. Very good stuff – quite chilling, especially as it plays itself so straight that I couldn’t quite tell whether they were taking the piss at times or not. It’s ending – with the idea that the guilty in modern America is not always who did it but who makes us feel safer by blaming casts a very uncomfortable light on our modern world. This is because while from the distance of a film we can see the ‘truth’ – such as it is presented to us, I know people who in the real world who would prefer the answer to George W.’s assassin that the U.S. in this film accepts rather than the more uncomfortable less politicaly-charged answer. The subtle critiques of the patriot act and its ilk are also very interesting viewing.

Does this prove that human life is worthless because dolphins possess the potential to supplant us or because someone went to the bother of teaching them the goddamn batman theme tune?!?

My computer automaticaly updated my internet explorer – so it’s now exactly like firefox (well, obviously not, but close enough for me). So now I’m on firefox instead as it’s just easier than this new windows crap…

In other news, I realised today that I’m well behind with my work for college so I’d better start. Bugger.

And finally, it’s the internal UCC Philosoph competition tonight so there shouldn’t be any calls of libel as there was last week:).

More later.

Oh joy. To be honest, this is nearly better for me than Rummie getting the boot as the way that under Bolton the UN has been even more neutred than usual has had a horrible effect on many international crises (Darfur etc.). Hopefuly this is a further sign of better days ahead…