EUROPEAN TELEVISION has arrived at last! They finally turned up yesterday, one day and three hours late, put a whacking great dish on my house, drilled yet another hole in the wall ~ there is now a spaghetti junction of wires behind the TV set from 2 satellites, telephone and cable (I don't subscribe to cable). I get so many new channels it took eight sides of A4 to list them all. About 200 in German, 22 in French, 12 in English and a scattering of others in mysterious Eastern tongues. Remember the other day I was moaning about foreign stations not subtitling in English? Well I now do get Chinese documentaries and Korean soaps with English subtitles. I didn't know what to expect from German telly before I got it, but it's better than I thought it would be. Basically I get for free the type of programming you'd have to pay for if you wanted it in English. Lots of diving with the fishes, ice-cave exploration and documentaries about Madonna. Years before we actually had the digital switchover I remember a British government spokesman proclaiming how British multichannel TV would be the best in the world. Well he's a liar. He failed to mention back-to-back Judge Judy,
Coronation and Emmerdale repeats (terrible British soap opera) and endless Jeremy Kyle (famously rude and bigoted talk show host whose programme consists almost entirely of lie detector and DNA tests for rowing lower-class families. I even found a German equivalent to my favourite programme which is called Judge Barbara. She's a criminal court judge with dyed red hair and the witnesses say "Scheiße" a lot. (It's not reality TV, it's actors.) In fact Germany seems thankfully largely devoid of reality TV and what they do have involves far more interesting perpetrators (eg the animals of Frankfurt zoo). I do miss Judge Judy though. If she hadn't been a lawyer, she should have been a hand-model. She has the most beautiful hands in television.
I haven't given up on English TV forever though. How could I when the most important event of the 21st century occurred last night at 9pm on Channel 5 yes DALLAS IS BACK. The only soap I ever watch. That Bobby Ewing is a loser. If you had TWO BILLION barrels of premium-grade crude under your house wouldn't you get drilling away? When brent crude is currently going for £114.55 a barrel? (And a barrel holds 42 gallons; 159 litres.) By the way I think Lorimar are really racist: premiering the series in America on 29 June yet making Britain wait till September 5 ~ as if we are some unimportant backwater when really America is in the middle of nowhere ~ both geographically and economically.
I can't wait till I'm emperor of London. The policies of my government shall be simple: rainbow streetlights and the tallest buildings and fastest trains and low taxes for the rich. I would get rid of the "Green Belt" that is strangling this city and have London expanded in size until the population tops 100 million. I would scrap restrictive building regulations and leave just 2. No tower blocks permitted of less than 150 storeys. No buildings, apart from houses, allowed to be less than 25 storeys. Everywhere would be mixed use. No zoning, which kills cities and leaves dead zones. I would get Boring green spaces like Hyde park transformed into stately formal gardens.
On a more serious note, I would love to study town planning. However my opinions on the matter are so strong (I'm in favour of high-density mixed use with residential properties built on top of businesses) I couldn't handle the powerless, thwarted feeling of having my views ignored. Which is why nothing short of the job-title "Emperor" will ever satisfy me.
I have infection in my ear yet AGAIN and I've just seen a nurse-practitioner who prescribed me antibiotic pills (I don't want to spray anything else into my ears. They've had enough of being tampered with). She also gave me a Seroquel (quetiapine) refill ten days before the due date. I had been taking half doses to make my supply last and already I'm feeling constantly excited over nothing (ie the manic feeling is coming through). When you look up my medical notes "SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDERS" comes boldly through (as if I've got more than one of them). Thankfully "raving junkie" does not. I'm extremely careful not to mention my drug habit, or the fact that I'm still knocking back methadone every day beause I don't want prejudice and I don't want them refusing me sleepers when I need them (I really cannot see a connection between addiction to heroin, which is an opiate and taking sleeping pills occasionally, which are not opiates, never make me high, and cannot substitute for them. And yet my old GP, who was snotty and condescending said "I am not prescribing drugs of addiction!" when I asked for humble ZOPICLONE!!)
Why did I steer all through the controversy on Anna Grace in my last post which was only there to say 1 she has put up Youtubes of herself and 2 she sounds like a cartoon character ~ really cute. And yet there I am ranting about personality disorder issues. Totally irrelevant. And I don't even think I was manic when I wrote that. (Mania being a primary cause of tangential expositions.) I hope Anna isn't annoyed with me. It wasn't meant to be a hatchet job, although it kind of looks like one. Also I insisted in calling her pet Porkshire "Eleanor Rigsby" after "Mr Rigsby" in Rising Damp. Knowing all along that Elle's actual name is Elean or RIGBY ~ after the Beatles' song...
Well I have ranted enough for one day. I really must get back to have Iceland Chunky Cod fillets with American Crisscross Fries and my very own Tomato Surpise (the surprise is that they're chopped up, doused in black pepper and vinegar and... well, that's that. Tomatoes in vinegar are much nicer than tomatoes on their own...)
Illustrated: Judge Barbra Salesch; Judge Judy being a rudy, as per usual; the Burj Dubai, also known as the Burj Khalifa, currently tallest skyscraper in the world putting London's tinsy-winsy 72-storey "Shard" to shame; a satellite dish on a German building; Anna Grace cradling her Porkshire...
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