Well I just had to didn't I? After the comments over the last hour or so. Having read his profile, quite a few of his posts and comments, I have been entertained, enlightened, educated and of course embiggened, so I felt he was right in asking just where his lifetime achievement award was, so here it is;

Unless you prefer this sort?

Please raise your glasses to Vendbien (and give him one) and toast an award a long time in the making, and I'm sure just as long in the celebrating . it's a good thing he's just joined the household, at least he won't have to drive home.

Oh, and as to the other thing, the imagination is always fertile ground, but I'll leave a little something in your room.

Right, next through the door is FPTV , I can't work out if that stands for Festival Portuguese Television or Front Projection Television (hence the 'blog title). Now FPTV is a little secretive, but given that he, or she, has got two pictures of John Simm (one as a Camberwicked Sam Tyler) on their profile, I'm thinking we have a thing or two in common . Add to that they've just signed up for Lin's DW quiz, so we'll get to know each other I'm sure over the next five harrowing weeks. Although one has to worry about someone that signed up on April 1st...or is that just me?

So make yourself at home, grab a drink etc and be assured you're surrounded by people that will understand the need to kvetch about the crazy picture questions you are about to get exposed to.

Alright my rage against the machine 'blog has been front page long enough and it looks like we're all in a standoff with TV.com at the moment, neither group appears to be budging so I thought it was time I went back to my long neglected and somewhat embarrassing habit of welcoming newcomers to the house.

There have been quite a few since the last time I did this, but when I went to research them for the little blurb I do, some of them appear to have disappeared, and some, well I'm not quite sure why they would track me in the first place, so in the end I think I'm down to four new lunatics, sorry inductees.

So without further blabbering, please say hello to Marie-lee, I'm going to go with that actually being her name, but I've been wrong before - LM springs to mind. She's an Aussie and fan of Doctor Who, Robin Hood and Midsomer Murders, seriously how could I not like her? Although can't sympathise with the ironing, I don't even own an ironing board, although the idea of turning up to a wedding in PJ's is enticing (hey if The Doctor and Tommy can save the world in them, why not?)

So, ML, pull up a beanbag, grab a drink or whatever else takes your fancy and welcome aboard.

Lin has probably said pretty much everything that can be said in her 'blog about the appalling behaviour of TV.com in its decision to create duplicate guides for shows beginning their airing run in the US. It all began with The Sarah Jane Adventures, a show I have contributed to in the past and one that being part of the Whoniverse has a place dear to my heart, but the rot has spread, and it seems it is happening not just to UK based shows, but to Canadian as well. I can easily see it jumping to Australian, New Zealand in fact pretty much any English-speaking country is ripe for this particular form of racism, and whilst I dislike the word and all it implies I cannot help but think it is apt here.

This is not a business decision on CNET's part, or if it is it is a bad one. The reason this site is successful is the users, global participants who have a shared passion for the products of the tv industry and come to this place to discuss and debate, to argue and agree, to console and comfort over what happens to our 'on-screen' friends. Without those users, the sponsors and advertisers would not get the amount of exposure that they do, they would not be linked to a successful and vibrant community and without seeing a bang for their buck they would leave. How can annoying your major asset be a good way to keep a business going?

We have to fight this, it's no longer on the beaches, landing grounds, or in the fields and in the streets, but once again we will defend to the death our native product, and aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of our strength.

Spread the word to all you know, and let the halls of CNET ring with the voice of our displeasure.

*Edit* Well it looks like the first battle has been won and the duplicate guides are being removed, in fact that was the message I got back on the couple of subs I put in requesting my original subs removal from the duplicate guide. There was even a message to submit them to the original guide as that was the right place. It made me laugh. Oh and I noticed the comments on the front page from the Torchwood finale 'Thanks to the Brits our guide has trivia, quotes and more!' Hysterical.

Still the war is not yet won, and we need to keep up the pressure and let tv.com know just how we can work together.

It's been a few days since I saw Exit Wounds and I thought I'd have got over it, but I really haven't, I've watched it once, which is a singular experience when it comes to Torchwood, but I can't make myself watch it again. They killed Toshiko and that sucks, more than I thought it would, more than it probably should but it does and I'm not forgiving them, and I'm going to respond in the only way I can. I'm not going to buy anything Torchwood related ever again, no DVD's, no books, no advertising dollars from watching, nothing which adds to their prestige or pocket. Stuff them, they killed my girl, and it won't ever be right again.

Goodbye Beautiful girl, you deserved so much better than this.

Well not in the traditional sense, but the Annual Conference is done, so right at the moment I'm as far away from the next one as it's possible to be. Of course there is all the post-conference work to do, but compared to pre-Conference it's a bit of a doddle.

On to more interesting stuff, well Lin's hair-tearing quiz is over and I got a great prize as winner, I left him exhausted in a room somewhere, I'm sure I can find him again in a few hours when he's had some sleep. It was a lot of fun and really sharpened up those research skills, not to mention that I got to know a few more of the TV.com residents a little better because of it, and that is never a bad thing.

I'm taking the whole neighbour from hell thing to the next level, seems the 'discussion' we had wasn't enough for her to behave like a reasonable human being so it's off to the Body Corporate to see if they can scare some sense into her.

Other than that I'm almost afraid to head back to the boards, there are probably a thousand unread posts that I just have to read to know what's going on, and the DW one is probably going to be ramping up in preparation for the new series, but the longer I leave it the more work it is going to be.

Right, time to dive back in, I'm sure the water is fine .

Just a quick note to let you guys know I'm going to be away for the next week, off to that dreaded conference . So I won't be around to comment or post, but I'll read all your 'blogs when I get back, really I will.

Have a fun week, not sure I will.

..and I'll probably feel like this somewhere along the line

Arthur C. Clarke passed away today, on his lovely island home in Sri Lanka, and I can't believe he's gone. I remember devouring his books as a child, watching him walk along that lovely beach in his TV series and being lucky enough to attend one of his lectures a lifetime ago. A mind that could contemplate space elevators, geostationary telecommunication arrays and Clarke's Laws, that could plumb the depths of the oceans with as much ease as it reached up to the stars is one that will be surely missed. The only consolation is the 100+ books he left behind and the fact his ideas and dreams changed the world in which we live, but I will miss him.

...to appreciate just how many really amazing people have come out of the country. Not just the poets and writers, intellectuals, musicians, actors and sports-people. Just the ordinary everyday folk who can trace their heritage back to that lovely green land, and yes I am one of them - one of my grandparents hails from there, so I say raise a glass of something green (natural or dyed) to the Irish in all of us and in those without whom out lives wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun.

Oh and I had to throw a few of these in, because they're lovely

So after those lovely images I'm off to join some friends and their newly arrived (yes, from Ireland) relatives at the pub. That and the fact at the moment Lin's quiz is making me feel like this.

A Wild Sheep Chase

Haruki Murakami is a surreal author, what's more he's a surreal Japanese author who although fluent in English always writes in and for Japanese, so for me any novel of his is going to be a translated edition, which always adds another level of disconnectedness from the original text. So we have a surreal writer with a specifically non-western audience and a distance created by translation and yet it works, I mean it really works. I've read a few of his books now, in fact I'm reading his most 'famous' The Wind up Bird Chronicle at the moment, but this was the one that started me off, A Wild Sheep Chase, and on the surface the title is exactly what the book is about.

The protagonist, we never learn his name (in fact the only name we ever learn is that of his decrepit and flatulent cat, Kipper) is a late twenties/early thirties Japanese man, left by his wife because he's 'running on autopilot', working as a copywriter for an advertising firm. His life is going along at a normal pace with normal and honestly quite ordinary interactions, life is just happening to him, as happens to the vast majority of us, and he not only recognises the fact, he's fine with it. There is no indication this will ever change until he uses a particular photograph in one of his ad campaigns; it too is on the surface an ordinary photograph, a green field with mountains and a scattering of sheep, nothing to write home about. But it is, it seems amongst that innocuous herd of sheep is one that shouldn't exist, a sheep-that-cannot-be, a magical mystical metaphysical sheep with a star on its back. Soon afterwards he's visited by a mysterious and vaguely ominous man, actually most of the interactions are vaguely ominous it's Murakami's $tyle, who requests on behalf of 'The Boss', an inexplicable and hallucinatory media tycoon with connections everywhere, that he stop running the ad and informs him he has now taken on the quest to track down the sheep in question. The prize for finding the sheep is a great deal of money and an unspecified but heavily hinted at spiritual revelation of the sort that money cannot buy, the penalty for not finding it, career death and lifelong humiliation.

For reasons that seem perfectly logical by this time, in fact that's the beauty of Murakami's writing, everything seems perfectly logical at the time, even when from an outside view it is anything but, our Protagonist decides to go and find the sheep, after all the photograph was sent to him by an old school friend, a bit of a conspiracy theorist only referred to as 'The Rat' so how hard could it be?

From this point on the twists and turns remind me of some of the old fashioned hardboiled detective novels, think Raymond Chandler, and then throw in a bit of Kafka, David Lynch and Salvador Dali for fun. An odd array of characters turn up to help and hinder, sometimes at the same time, our questing everyman. He gets mixed up in a fairly torrid relationship with an eccentrically beautiful model with magical ears, threatened by more menacing men, meets an obsessed Sheep Professor who is to put it accurately out of his mind, given an insight into a real (maybe) conspiracy, is somewhat befriended by a sheep-man (has to be read to be conceived), gets God's phone number and an invitation to give him/her/it a call, and spends time with his mirror image in a lonely house in the middle of nowhere waiting for the sheep to reveal itself and for the fate of various characters to be explained.

Whether that actually happens by the end of the novel is something that only the reader can decide, because like most of Murakami's work there are no neat endings, no sweet little bows tying everything together. This is a book where after you have finished you feel the need to pick it up again and start from the beginning because you know there was something you missed, and when you get to the end the second time you realise what it was and that it itself has pointed to something else you missed as well. It's beautifully, elegantly frustrating and absolutely addictive.

I will outright recommend Murakami to anyone, however, I will attach to that recommendation a warning, that you shouldn't be surprised (or take it personally) if you don't like it, but if you do you'll be a fan forever.

Don't forget to visit the BAA forum .

Right so today is obviously my wander around the 'net looking at cute men day. Oh that's been so hard.

In response to BoromirBeauty's question about TV's sexiest men, I thought I would follow Lin's lead and actually do a 'blog post about them. That and other than my header, I rarely do 'eye-candy'.

So in no real order, mostly because I can't decide between a lot of them, are my 15 choices. Frighteningly Lin and I have a few in common, not sure what that means, but it's probably good.

Josh Duhamel (Las Vegas)

I don't actually watch the show that much, but there is something about the way he smiles, that sort of little boy tip of the head, just works.

Bradley Whitford (The West Wing)

What can I say, I spent 6 years waiting for him and Donna to hook up and only after they did, did I realise just how hot he was, rather than just smart and charming (which I already knew).

Hugh Jackman (Viva Laughlin)

Yes, yes he's a hottie as Wolverine, but I remember him from Paperback Hero and saw him on stage in Beauty and the Beast, those tights were just tight enough. *sigh*

Hugh Laurie (House)

Seriously, those eyes, that smile, that wit.

Will Yun Lee (Witchblade)

You all thought I was going to put Bionic Woman, didn't you. Nope this guy caught my eye back in the short lived but fairly interesting Witchblade. Another one with a very easy smile.

Hill Harper (CSI: Chocolate)

Not quite sure what it is about Hill that works for me, but it does so I'm not complaining. Might be something about the jeans he wore in an episode or two that left little to the imagination, though.

Seth Green (BTVS)

I know, he's a little young, but there is something old in those eyes and when he went wolfman back in Buffy, I used to get shivers, then again, I was younger then too.

Dirk Benedict (The A-team)

I know, I know really reaching back for this one, but 'The Face' used to get to me in my rash youth, and I also adored him as Starbuck, you know back in that other version of Battlestar.

Brendan Fraser (Scrubs)

When he's not bugging JD, he's battling mummies and rescuing Librarians, how could I not fall for someone who does that?

Douglas Henshall (Primeval)

Seriously there is something in my wiring that goes for the smart ones. Not to mention the accent doesn't hurt.

Jason Momoa (Stargate Atlantis)

But then again there is nothing wrong with simply going for 'Oh my he could crush me in those arms' either.

John Barrowman (Torchwood)

As if I could leave him off the list, although I must state that it'd be The Captain I was lusting after since JB is happily gay and therefore pretty much off the radar. Jack, though, different story. Oh and it seems not only Ianto looks good in a suit!

Jensen Ackles (Supernatural)

Ok so sometimes my taste run to the bad boy (sometimes??? I hear you scream) Ok well the bad boy doomed to hell in a year, and therefore so vulnerable, and you know what that does to a girl.

David Tennant (Doctor Who)

Well really, that's no surprise, is it? He's almost got it all for me, looks, charm, smile, wicked gleam in the eye, killer arse oh and did I mention he travels through time? No really David is lovely and you just know a cuddle will become something more so quickly.

John Simm (Doctor Who)

Shocked, aren't you? No cuddling with this one, this is lust, not pure and rarely simple. Of course in his role as Harold Saxon he also ticks all the boxes, not just the attractive in the light of day ones, the dark twisted broken and battered ones too, and the 'just come here and let me fix that' as well. I never really stood a chance.

Well this morning when I finally logged on, I found a couple of messages in my inbox telling me I'd been tagged, further research has led to the conclusion that even though I've been tagged twice I'm only required to tell you five things, and given that I've finally got the latest round in to Lin, I do have a bit of time. Although please note, I usually don't participate in these sort of things, so don't think this is setting a precedent or anything!

So 5 things you don't know about me, or I don't think you know about me...hmmmm

1. Due to the efforts of my Great Aunt I can trace back my family tree for over a thousand years (and in her words ' Domesday Book, Brilliant, every bugger who ever burned a church, bastards!' ).

2. As a child, I once found a German coin dated 1943 on the beach at Normandy, and I still have it to this day.

3. Purple is my favourite colour and if I can combine that with shoes, I'm in retail heaven.

4. I spent my 21st birthday in hospital sitting by the bedside of my then fiancee, and missed my own suprise party.

5. I have a thing about post-it notes, I always have some with me, home, office, handbag, you name it.

There I think that will do, now to go find out what the other tagged victims revealed.

It's been a while since I put fingers to keyboard, actually as Lin will attest it's been a while since I've been around, hey four days in cyberspace can be a lifetime. Work is getting nuttier by the minute and my downstairs neighbours have decided that good manners doesn't apply to them and they can play their annoying racing car game at full volume any time they like. It makes home a little less of a comfort zone at the moment. So I've pretty much been working flat chat or out avoiding home until I can find a time to confront them, I'm thinking this weekend may be it, but it does keep me away from the social aspects of the intenet, i.e. this place.

Still it hasn't been barren on the TV front. I lent my first series of Dexter to a friend last weekend and he watched them all in a row, completely hooked, which meant I got to chat to him about the fact we both like an avowed serial killer, it was especially fun as we did it over drinks and dinner and completely freaked out the people on the table next to us. It's actually not that hard to lose all TV references when discussing the show, makes people think you have the oddest life.

Other than that - work, Lin's brain-bender, work, pounding on the floor with a hammer, work, drinking, gas-bagging and you guessed it, work.

How's it with you?

Oh and to all .0684% of the population this applies to, Happy Birthday Leapers!

I had to do a new 'blog since the whole rotating JS is making thought difficult, and Lin has requested the use of my brain to answer her horrid, wicked, entirely-my-own-fault-because-I-asked-to-play quiz, so I decided to share with you a fairly surreal moment I had watching telly last night.

I am as a few of you know a fan of the quiet British detective story, sleuths like Barnaby and Foyle, Poirot and Lynley, Powerscourt and Peabody always get my attention, so it was no surprise I was watching the latest Marple with Geraldine McEwan on Sunday night, this episode Ordeal by Innocence actually wasn't a Marple story when Agatha wrote it and that may add to the surrealness of it since Arthur Calgary should have played a bigger part, but the really weird thing was seeing first Burn Gorman as Jacko followed by Bryan Dick (who played Adam in the eponymous Torchwood episode) as his brother and then Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler) as his previous lover. That concept had my brain going to all sorts of odd places, Jackie and Owen, there's a 'ship that should never be.

I did a bit of research seems Burn and Bryan have worked together a bit, in this as well as Bleak House. I was just wondering how many other six degrees do you think there have been in regard to the Torchwood cast. I mean I know that RTD pulls a lot of his actors from the Welsh Pool (not the town) so there has to be a certain interconnectedness with the casting, but Bryan is from Carlisle and Camille from London, so that's hardly the case there.

Now for the rude bit, seems the interesting, upwardly mobile and steadily more revealing mrn71 decided to friend me a little while ago and I was so overwhelmed with quiz PM's I totally forgot to acknowledge the message! So without any more delay and a huge glass of whatever tickle's his fancy, please welcome him to the house. You can share in the headaches that the quiz is engendering and commiserate with the rest of us, or just zonk out in front of the giant flatscreen and watch a game or six.

Right I think it's time I went back to research, I know that I know that face, I just can't place it. *mumble, grumble*

can't be that hard, now can it? You decide, studying and research or a kidnap and crate with airholes?

BTW, this is the avie I was talking about

...side note I am joking JS is perfectly safe, it's HS I want, and he's not real....sigh.

Oh and because Lee is being too cute to live

Today is a big day in Australian History. One of the platforms that our new Prime Minister used during his election was a commitment to say sorry to the indigenous population of Australia for the Stolen Generation programme. Now before I continue I have to say, I am fully in agreement with apologising for this, I think it was a terrible thing and the ramifications of it were not only felt within the generation it happened to but to their children as well. But then I'm also the sort of person that thinks Marriage is for consenting adults regardless of gender, parental pressure, religion or any other sodding thing, that euthanasia should be a choice for everyone and that legislation that says you have to end your days in pain and without dignity are reprehensible, that capital punishment* doesn't work as a deterrent but it generally has the effect of stopping that particular bastard from doing whatever he or she did again so you'd better be sure they did it, that there is only one race on this planet, the Human one and that I am, generally speaking, weird.

So whilst I am fully in agreement and support of the speech that PM Rudd is going to make tomorrow (the transcript comes out today at 5pm) I do have to take a somewhat analytical approach, I am certain without a shadow of a doubt that when this idea was first mooted back in the latter half of the 19th Century that the intent was one on behalf of the children, that the idea was that they would have a better chance of health, education, quality of life etc outside of their tribal environs and that given the prevailing attitudes at the time it seemed the most logical and indeed the most compassionate thing to do and was actually meant with the best of intentions, but that like most of those it lead straight to Hades. I think in the end it kept in place a rigid attitude that should have naturally evolved over time, education and exposure into a realisation that everybody has the same basic rights and needs. So I cannot condone lambasting the originators of this idea, or those people who sought to do the right thing even when they did it the wrong way. Nor do I feel that this can be retroactively applied to the whole European arrival in Australia as some people are opinioning. What I can and fully do support is simply the act of apologising for a mistake made and with the firm undertaking to prevent anything of this nature happening again. A country, a policy, a decision - all made by humans, and we err. The best thing we can do is say sorry.

*thanks Lin

Well I succumbed, and went and got me a 'blog header, and you just knew I'd have to go with Saxon, because well, like it says 'Evil is so Sexy'. I have to thank the wonderful people over on the official website forum for it though, that's where I snaffled it from.

In other news, my brain has melted due to Lin and it may never really recover, I suppose I'll know when the next series of questions come out and if I don't run screaming to the drive through chocolate, vodka and gratuitous sex store I'll know I'm ok.

I've got a big fat nothing planned for this weekend, originally it had a few items on it, my horse was running, parties, etc, but the horse is running today instead and the party got cancelled due to an unexpected pregnancy, no really, so it's become a bit of a break instead. Which I am looking forward to really. Just closing the door on the world, filling up my new bookshelves that I picked up last weekend with my best friend (he drives, I don't). Cataloging the library, oh which reminds me I found this great free library catalogue programme which allows you to use your web-cam as a bar-code scanner for the ISBN. There are a few commercial programmes I've seen out there that do the same but this one is free. Just go to getlibra.com (not putting in a link TV.com makes unhappy face if you do). It also does DVD's, CD's, Games etc.

Ok think that's it for the moment, I'm going to go back to staring at my blog header for a while. *sigh*

Oh and the title is from the latest episode of House, which had me in hysterics and not simply because a lot of H/W 'shippers out there just died a not so silent death.

Well since I am studiously avoiding the Torchwood Forum at the moment I thought is was about time to update my comings and goings this week. Work has been getting busier all the time our Annual Conference is 8 weeks away so it's going to just get steadily more nuts but then I knew that was part of the job and I'm lucky in that the people I work with ascribe to the work hard, play hard ethic so it all generally evens out in the end. Still going to be less and less sleep for the next couple of months, it's a good thing I don't need a lot.

As far as the COUP goes, no new members of that, although I have manged to get closer on a few but I have picked up another couple of adored names from my childhood, the scene-stealing quintessentially lovely, and free-thinking Denholm Elliott

Plus the equally adorable and stunningly comedic genius that is Richard Briers, and he's turning up in Torchwood this series, how cool is that?

Also a pair of lovely young ladies who are on their way up the stardom ladder and both it is rumoured are turning up in Doctor Who for series four although I discovered them in Northanger Abbey and Like Father like Son respectively

Felicity Jones

Georgia Moffett

So it's getting quite crowded out in the barracks/holiday resort. I think I may have to speak to the contractors about adding another wing.

And in that theme I also have to welcome another inmate to the house itself, ContinuumVortex , or CV to his friends who is a Whoniverse nut and all round fun guy and I can't believe it's taken this long for him to come and visit. So glasses charged my dears and welcome him to the house.

Oooh and it looks like that Housewives of Orange County emblem has finally gone!

The squee-fest below was beginning to hurt my eyes, and really a girl can only squee for so long ( I think). So new 'blog.

Well Lin's quiz has started with a bang and many cries, from me at least, of who is that, I know who that is why can't I remember his bleeping name, oh sod it I'll just guess. Plus a couple of, oooh sneaky and I know that one, I know that one! All in all I'm already enjoying myself and remarkably my competitive beastie is quiet, he seems to be well fed on victories in the real world, which is good as he's quite hairy and pear-shaped and has a tendency to bite.

I was off yesterday for most of the day at the Midsumma festival in Melbourne, it's a LGBT event I went with a friend who felt he needed a beard as he's still new to the scene and it rained on and off which is not so great for an outdoor event but it was still a blast as always and I had a lot of fun catching up with a few old friends and making some new ones. We spent a good part of the afternoon discussing Doctor Who, whilst sheltering from the showers, if you can believe it. Seems my obsessions follow me everywhere.

Both Torchwood and Primeval have kicked off their new seasons fairly well, Torchwood of course engendered the squee-fest below and Primeval has prehistorical creatures and time paradoxes and all sorts of other exceptionally geek-friendly content, so I'm not complaining. In fact I realised I liked the character of Stephen Hart (James Murray) so much that I went off and snagged his guide, I'm sure he'll fit in with the military types in the barracks and for the rest he's a bit of eye-candy. There appears to be a bit of a theme with characters name Hart and eye-candy it seems. I think that Stephen has more up his sleeve than we know. Haven't watched the second episode yet, it's currently winging it's way to me, but I'm looking forward to it.

Other than that the normal round of life, laughter and work, oh well got to pay the bills somehow. Oh and I'm a Whammy, that is so cute!

and of course....