Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Bill Gates, Microsoft Founder, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, Each Donate $100,000 For Marriage Equality
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are coughing up a bit of cash for marriage equality.
According to the Associated Press, Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, and Ballmer, the company’s CEO, have each written $100,000 checks to Washington United for Marriage, a same-sex marriage advocacy group based in Seattle.
In February, Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the state, and the law was to go into effect on June 7. But that was put in hold last month when opponents gathered enough signatures to put the the bill up for referendum in the November general election.
According to its website, Washington United for Marriage “is a coalition of organizations, congregations, unions, and businesses working together to defend civil marriage for loving, committed same-sex couples.”
A Microsoft spokesperson told The Huffington Post that the company doesn’t comment on political contributions made by employees, including the CEO.
Mcphereson Whoops
So caught up was in telling you my woes I forgot the reason I was posting. Having checked the job papers this morning I was amazed that my old pal Nigel Farmer was holding a reunion for the stars of the 1980s soap opera ‘Anglian Lives’. The show was local & never made it to network, the snobs in London felt anyone in the East Anglia would be of little interest to the rest of the populous, but oh! How wrong they were. This ignorance afforded us a certain cache, we could cover issues those in London would balk at.
Some of the subjects covered which those in London would have balked at.
Tractor maintenance
Fleas
Over cooked Puddings
Faulty pitchforks
Jamborees.
Ritual Devil sacrifice
Home made curtains
Yes, and even to this day those in London are woefully ignorant of such things. We also covered social and environmental issues
Oil
Water
Electricity
The Rainforrests
Bovril
The set up of the show was simple. Rob Wainright (Richard Griffiths) was a man who discovers a new fuel source in a field in East Anglia. He makes his fortune, millions (which today would probably still be millions) of pounds rolls in. It was truly the Dallas of its’ day, with Ron playing the head of a oligarchy of super rich people, and his cheating, unfaithful and duplicitous wife, whose evil was only out matched by her glamour and looks, Doreen. (Played by Penelope Keith). He had a son, two daughters and a dachsund, although the Dachsund didn’t seem particularly used to film sets, and was written out after biting a guest stars’ ears off mid scene. As the blood gushed from his wounds, Rickman continued to deliver his lines, and even as he lost conciousness he was still emoting like a good ‘un. Of course it’s not something he chooses to talk about, which is why so few interviewers ask him about his ears. I did hear the Radio Norfolk personality Nathan Wickham mention it to him in passing during a interview about Rickmans’ book, shortly before Wickhams’ mysterious disappearance.
Oh, the array of stars who queued up to be on the show. Sylvester McCoy. Bono. Dr Hilary Jones. A man who claimed to be Hartley Hare. It was halcyon days of invites, chat shows and controversy. I remember we did a story line, which, if you took a straw pole around some of the villages in East Anglia (or E.A., as we liked to call it) You would find almost 8% of people were talking about it. 3% positively. Yes, were were the flavour of the month in many ways, an intoxicating brew of talent, script and direction which assured us success. Such a shame Anglian Television decided to ditch it after the first show and put on repeats of sale Of The century.
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Posted By Ed to Mcphereson on 6/19/2012 01:45:00 PM
Mcphereson The Return of Galaxy Log!
Scanning through the myriad emails and messages, I notice one from Peter Nayland-Goathe, a old and wily man and dare I say, a friend. Although he has not been in touch recently, not since the end of Galactic Log, he brought glad tidyings. Apparently they are thinking of bringing back GL for whole new generation.
For those who don’t know Galactic Log was one of the most innovative Sci Fi shows ever made. It had a cult following in the 1980s, and to enhance it’s exclusive and on the edge style, it has never featured in any sci-fi convention, and wouldn’t do even if we were invited. The reviews were mixed for it, it seems the critics just ‘didn’t get it’. One that stands out in my mind was ‘Galactic Log should be renamed “there’s nothing on BBC2 either”‘. A trifle unkind.
In the series I played Vorbilon, a Spand from the planet Squirb, who had been recruited into the United Kingdom of Planets partly because his own planet and star system was burnt up in a supernova and partly because of the luncheon vouchers.
Sadly Vorbilon was struck dumb by an alien crumb ray in the second episode, so I had to convey the angst, loneliness and desperation of my character using only my physical perspicacity and rubber tendrils.
I am to meet Nayland-Goathe tomorrow – the 15th. I shall keep you informed.
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Posted By Ed to Mcphereson on 4/24/2012 01:50:00 AM
The 31 Types of Facebook Users | Digital | SPLICETODAY.com
The Insipid Ingratiator. No observation is too banal for you to share with the Facebook hive mind, which absolutely has to know that your son fell asleep eating honey-cheese curls and see the photograph that proves it. Why shouldn’t the world know that hot tea is soothing your sore throat? Why not tell everybody on your Friend list that you’re tickled pink by an unspecified decades-old Carol Burnett Show punch line?
The Non-Sequitur Enthusiast. You delight in posting specious in-jokes on other people’s Walls.
The Narcissist. You go to Facebook to post about stuff, and occasionally respond to folks who respond to your posts—and that’s it.
The Bashful Gourmet. You make meals, but before you consume them, you carefully photograph them and post the photographs.
The Milquetoast Gamer. Your Wall—and the Walls of your peeps—are littered with cutesy, colorful posts representative of incessant exchanges of virtual favors and digital currency. If any of you read Amusing Ourselves To Death, the book’s relevance to what you’re pretending is real life would go way, way over your heads.
The Archivist. You’re the Indiana Jones of under-the-radar musical treasures perpetually and unfairly flying under the Internet radar, and YouTube is your medium.
The Aspirationist. You desperately want other people to realize their goals, to find happiness and inner peace, and you’re not trying to sell anything.
The Bible Belter. Pretty much the same as above, only you’ve got a Holy Bible app on your iPhone instead of a Buddha Machine app.
The Shy Retirer. You know those people who loiter on the fringes of a party or conversation and contribute so little that they might as well not even be there? This type of Facebook user is even more of a non-entity, with weeks or months elapsing between blips of activity.
The Crusader. You’re hoping against hope that others will be willing to sign this petition or peruse that Amnesty International article, and there’s more where that came from.
The Musician. You’ve got a show coming up, or several, with other musicians.
The Loquacious Wonder. You hold forth more in a single, sustained comment string than you do with members of your own immediate family.
The Reveler. You faithfully wish every last Facebook friend a happy birthday, on the day, every year—including the Facebook friends you friended by mistake and the ones you don’t really even like and the ones who are, like, acquaintances of acquaintances whose hopes, dreams, and offline machinations are of no actual concern to you.
The Absentee Landlord. You created a Facebook account that you never, ever use.
The Slumlord. You created a Facebook account that you never, ever use, but you’ve got friends who post stuff on your Wall that you can’t be bothered to respond to.
The Friendster. Your Wall is a litany of you becoming friends with other Facebook users and nothing else whatsoever.
The Ghost. What profile? What recent posts? What are favorites?
The Bartlett’s Unfamiliar Inanities. You enjoy mad-libbing shopworn phrases into Dadaist nonsense.
The Mad Dog. In the 1980s, assholes flaunted Totally Gross Jokes books. In the 1990s and most of the 2000s, assholes buried email inboxes in misogynist, xenophobic mass forwards. Today, assholes run wild on Facebook. Don’t be an asshole.
The Dick. This world is so full of possibility; there are mountains to be climbed, books to be read and written, soup kitchens to volunteer at, adventures to embark on, dreams to realize, and so much more—and yet, thousands of people “like” entities at the polar opposite of their personal beliefs so they can spar vociferously about politics and stupid bullshit semi-anonymously online with people they’ll never meet. Comment-section flame wars: they’re not just for blogs.
The Borrower. You want to know if somebody can loan you something or give you a ride or recommend something, or if somebody knows someone else who can hook you up.
The Giver. You want to give something away, like tickets.
The Indifferent Misspeller. You’re of the opinion that a casual approach to grammar confers an authentic sincerity.
The On-Location Correspondent. You want everybody to know where you are eating or enjoying live music, and with whom, but you have precious little else to volunteer about what’s supposed to be so thrilling and fun that you had to tell everybody you were doing it.
The Cross-Platform Self-Promoter. You regularly update your blog, and you regularly post to Facebook for no other reason than to announce that you updated your blog.
The Pro Scribe. You write articles and interview notable personalities for online publications, and you occasionally post to Facebook for no other reason than to let people know that you’ve written a new article or interviewed a notable personage for one of these publications.
The Curator. Because there’s no reason that one’s Wall can’t double as a schizophrenic, temporally twisted art gallery, minus the Brie and white wine, you fill that void, continuously, obnoxiously, and obsessively.
The Town Crier. Airing private business in painfully pointed detail on Facebook feels cathartic for a couple seconds, until other people actually read it.
The Lothario. You caption all YouTube posts with “for a girl,” without bothering to say who the girl in question is.
The Provocateur. You post short, unspecific phrases or sentences that are designed to either provoke responses or relate to some recent-ish offline circumstance familiar to a privileged few.
The Machine-Gunning Serial Liker. Self-explanatory.
via The 31 Types of Facebook Users | Digital | SPLICETODAY.com.
Mcphereson March Madness
One thing March is famous for, apart from the Ides, is madness. It has been quite fraught here of the last few days. First, on the second a man called around claiming there were some slates missing off my roof. I inspected the roof myself while he waited, and found no such deficiency in slate provision, and on my descension I discovered it was not slates I was lacking but a television, DVD, blue ray and for some reason my pajamas. Having informed the Police of this foul business, I was duly sent a form (well, they claim I have been sent a form but to be honest I have recieved squat diddly from them). My pajamas I will miss, everything else can be replaced, but they were a gift from Chris Timothy and the very same pajamas featured three times in All Creatures. A collectors item for sure. Then on the fifth another man came around to tell me Mark Featherstone at the Bull Theatre was looking for someone for his play ‘Hopeless’. Apparently Featherstone had written the play with me in mind! I rushed around to the Bull stage door, full of adrenaline and enthusisasm, only to find there was no such play ergo no work. With a horrible feeling I rushed back to Islington where I discovered my setee, chair, table and lamps had all gone. what foul trickery does the criminal underworld think it is playing on me? Then, yesterday, the tragic news of Godfrey Bellamy, with whom I had the pleasure of appearing in ‘No No, Not Mr Bellamy’ in the 1970s had passed away during an epic attempt to scale K2 (although only having one arm since appearing in the musical live theatre version of ‘Born Free’ could be seen as something of a handicap. I poo-pooed this news thinking no sooner would I have left the house than Bellamy would be around taking what is left of my possessions – albeit slowly with his one arm – off to the underworld. I flatly refused in my paranoia to believe he was dead and this lead to them taking me to the undertakers and prizing open his coffin to check. Lo and behold, Bellamy. I have to say I have never felt so bad in my life. To doubt someone is dead simply because it may mean saying good by to my Victorian Tea Pot or the sideboard was unforgivable of me. I felt a fraud and a charlatan. I gave a splendid (if I say so myself) impromtu speech at the service 30 minutes later and was consilatory and sympathetic as any funeral goer could be.
I returned home to find they had taken everything but the floorboards. No one saw anything of course, I mean it would be too much to ask that people look out of their windows and see someone carrying doors, light fittings, taps, kitchens and an entire toilet and loading it up in a van. What is the public doing, not looking out of their windows? It’s not like they have much else to do. Theatre is afternoons and evenings, therefore the notion they are too busy to look or even ask a question ‘What is going on outside’ indicates to me they are not the kind of people I would want to watch me play Rattigan.
While I have been typing this I have had Diagnosis Murder on, and horror of horrors, one of the actors has my pajamas on.
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Posted By Ed to Mcphereson on 3/08/2012 04:45:00 AM
