Dear Terminator Salvation maker people,

I recently watched your movie and I’d like to compliment you on how much like a post-apocalyptic Transformers you made it. I love Transformers!! There’s just a couple of niggling little things that I’m having trouble with, wondering if you could help:

1) If you are going to cast someone as Kate Connor (nee Brewster), why not ask Claire Danes to reprise the role? She wasn’t that bad in T3. It’s not like she’s out of the limelight either, she was in Stardust last year, and that wasn’t a bad movie (De Niro stole it for me, you can’t upstage a cross-dressing pirate, but she played her part). I mean, you had to get rid of Nick Stahl, obviously. He was a terrible John Connor; he looked like he would cry if you knocked his ice cream out of his hand. But Danes? I would’ve given her a shot. Ok, you don’t want Danes, I get that. But then why not get someone who was age appropriate to play the role, instead of Bryce Dallas Howard, who is actually younger than Danes. I would normally not mind that much, but she looks ridiculously young for her real age (28!!). Yo, people casting the movie, did you not read the script? Its 14 years after the third movie!

2) Ok, so we all know that John Connor is the key to the success of the Resistance, because all of the previous movies have drummed it into us. But why does everyone in this movie believe it too? Because, well, it hasn’t happened yet. What we do see is John telling everyone who will listen, prophesising into his trusty long wave radio, that he knows what is coming and that his mother told him this was going to happen. This is where I’m confused. As far as I can tell, Connor is the 2018 version of the dude you see on the street corner holding a great big ‘The End is Nigh’ sign. Why would anyone listen to this guy? The only place that crazy talk like that is going to get you is a padded cell. Unless… wait a sec… man in his 30’s with a band of loyal followers, talking about how his parent has all the answers to salvation. I’ve read about this somewhere before, if only I could put my finger on where…

3) Why is John so intent on listening to the tapes his mum made him? Every time he has a crisis he’s listening to those TDK D-C60s (which, by the way I don’t think I saw him take into the bunker in T3). Call me pedantic, but wasn’t he actually there when it all was happening? I mean, obviously not for all the first Terminator shenanigans, but surely he was up to speed by the time Arnie had come back, again. I’m pretty sure if I’d had stuff like that happen in my life, I’d have a hard time forgetting about it. I’m guessing he now suffers from some kind of Memento-style memory loss and so needs the tapes to remind him what exactly is going on, right?
So, Kate Connor is pregnant. Come on, you can tell me, I bet they name the baby ‘John’, so that when the original John dies the ‘twist’ will be that it is the ‘new’ John Connor that saves the world!! If that isn’t the case but you like the idea, please feel free to take it!

Yours Terminatingly,

Rob

The other day, I left Subway in a state of dismay. Even though what i was holding in my hand was the result of a set of ingredients I had hand-picked, the way in which it had been assembled had left me worried that some form of abuse had occurred.

After jabbing the bread repeatedly with his blade and tearing it apart, the server threw the fillings I requested into my sub, in the same way I imagine a spurned ex would throw the clothes of a lover out of a top floor window into the bonfire in the garden below. All that was missing were the shouts of abuse about how much of a bastard I was, but I’m pretty much convinced she was saying it in her head. It was a sad excuse for a sub that I was given. Is it possible that mechanically reclaimed chicken gets treated with more respect than the average Italian BMT? Poor IBMTs. All they want is to be a delicious sandwich.

A visit to a McDonalds a couple of weeks ago left me in a similar state. I was in a jovially pleasant mood walking in, but as i reached the counter I was barked at: “WELCOME TO MCDONALDS, WHAT’S YOUR ORDER”. Before I had the time to say “Um, well, could I have..” the server, obviously impatient with my desire to speak in sentences, shouted the same question. Startled, I frantically replied “DOUBLE CHEESEBURGER. SMALL FRIES”, which seemed to be an adequate response as no other answers were required. It appears that the “relevant background experience” MaccyD’s asks for in it’s employees would be strict military training, stopping short of saluting of course (in public anyway, I’ve heard Ronald insists upon it behind closed doors).

It would seem that verbal correspondence is an unnecessary commodity in today’s service industry. Whenever I get to the front of the queue at a supermarket checkout I always take my headphones out of my ears as a polite gesture, a sign of openness to communication. It doesn’t seem to matter though, as nowadays the best you will get from your local Asda representative is an ‘ello’, followed by a lightning quick flinging of your purchases at you, and an impatient exhale because you can’t pack quite quickly enough. (I’ve found picking an exotic fruit or vegetable slows the flinging process somewhat: a courgette will only buy you a couple of seconds, but a pomegranate might get you as much as half a minute…)

But all is not lost. My faith was restored on a recent visit to, of all places, Greggs. Ending my request for a steak bake with ‘my love’ seemed to bring out the talkative side in the older woman serving me. She’d apparently had a run in with an abusive customer earlier in the day and offered this while she bagged up my slice: “I’ve been working at this lark for 19 years and I’ve been called all sorts: I been called a fat slag, I been called an old bag. But I just say to them ‘I don’t give a shit mate, i might be old and fat, but at least I’m not a wanker’, you know what i mean.”

Sometimes, I guess the silent approach to service does have it’s benefits for the customer.

Finally. After three seemingly endless months, my laptop is fixed. I’m glad to have it back.

It’s been a tough time without it: we all know internet browsing at work is never as fun, there is the constant threat of someone coming up behind you to ask about that report that was due before lunch while you are sniggering at a particularly ridiculous video of an intrepid Manx on lolcats.

All the more awkward is asking friends if you can use their laptop. It’s a question that makes me feel dirty, almost on a par with asking someone if you can use their toothbrush. As for being the laptop giver, there is something about letting people use your pride and joy. If the laptop is the comfort blanket of the 21st Century, it’s like letting someone wrap themselves in your, well, comfort blanket. Sometimes you can detect a certain hesitancy, the moment where they are weighing up the possibility that you might hit a key and smoke will start billowing out of it, or even worse, that you have absolutely no computer etiquette and will start using the thing as a tennis racket.

Maybe that suspicion is justified. What are we going to do on it anyway? Write up that urgent work report that is due tomorrow by lunch? Not likely is it. What is more likely is that you’ll be on Facebook checking how many people are attending the super-awesome party that you posted, or having a look on Twitter to see what everyone you are following had for dinner. You know, all those things that could wait until later but for some inexplicable reason seem really urgent all of a sudden. So why give your computer to someone else, it’s only wasting time that you could be valuably spending setting up that group for lovers of Coke Zero.

So now everyone has their own laptop. The lounge scene is now one where housemates sit around in silence, the only sound being the tap of keys on the keyboard and the occasional “hehe, nice profile pic”, followed by frantic bandwidth usage as everyone in the room comments on ‘that wicked picture of Kevin’.

Anyway, i’m off for a power-half-hour of FAIL blog lols, later…

But now it’s gone way beyond that. Even the supernatural has succumbed to the lure of reality television. I talk, of course, about ‘Most Haunted’, the show that has proven at least one thing: that even night vision camera work can’t make Daniella Westbrook look good. It has also given birth to psychic silver fox Derek Acora, the man who, with the help of his spirit guide Sam, turns into an epileptic with Tourette’s; shouting ridiculous nonsense that ties in with some historical scenario that he can ‘feel’ in the room.

This has appeared to be so monumentally popular with the masses that it has justified the commissioning of the eponymous ‘Derek Acora’s Ghost Towns’. Derek now communicates so regularly with the dead that dinner parties at the Acora residence must be a hoot, consist of Derek, his wife, and three empty chairs for Derek’s ‘friends’. I pity Mrs. Acora, I hate going to parties where I don’t know anyone to talk to. At least I can see other people though, so one up to me.

If you want to look into the cynical corporate face of spiritualism, a kind of ‘Ghostbucks’ if you like, go no further than Psychic TV (Sky channel 886). When viewing I noticed that it seems to have a format very similar to Babestation (not that I have ever watched that channel, I may have stumbled across it, once), meaning that either the same company owns them or the developers that sold the design were lazy, but had a bloody good sales pitch.

Glenda is skilled in seeking out your dead relatives in the beyond... and knows how to cup a ball

You never know, it could be deliberate. Both channels prey on their viewers being able to have contact with the unattainable. Is it too much to wonder that a couple of years we could have the opportunity to watch Soozie the Sexy Shaman, who not only talks to dead people wearing nothing but a see-through pink teddy, but talks ‘dirty’ to them. Only time will tell, but an addendum for unscrupulous, idea-stealing TV execs out there, I’ve already copyrighted the idea.

“Places aren’t haunted. People are haunted” mews the terrifyingly insipid Jennifer Love Hewitt in ‘Ghost Whisperer’. Given, Love Hewitt does employ all of her acting prowess: She pouts, a lot. She wears ridiculous outfits that you are most likely to see in a nursing home for retired Dynasty actresses. Close ups of her face seem permanently in soft focus, which makes you question your eyesight after a while. Apart from having deep and meaningfuls with the recently departed (that no ones seems to notice), she also runs an inexplicably sparse antiques store. There is hardly ever a customer in it. Even if there was, I’m not sure what they would buy. I might send ABC a script for next series. I imagine it would be a sad and touching tale, in which the antiques emporium goes out of business due to the ensuing credit crunch. Luxury buys are the first to go, not even the dead can help with that.

Love Hewitt: "I dress like dead people"

Then there’s ‘Medium’, starring the squeaky-voiced Patricia Arquette, arguably the most talented and accomplished of the Arquette clan. OK, not a huge achievement, they aren’t the Baldwins are they? But she is streets again of brother David, who is so still working and is certainly not doing glorified extras work. Episodes predictably unfold with Patricia receiving annoyingly cryptic dream messages from the recently deceased, solving the crime through habitual whining rhetoric, much in the way I presume a miserable old geezer solves the Times crossword puzzle. 

Arquette: "Waiter, I won't be needing that table now, I've made other plans."

So, why the proliferation in living-on-dead action? Personally, I blame M. Night Shyamalan; the guy responsible for the movie-with-a-twist-you-could-never-guess, The Sixth Sense. Everyone remembers the Bruce Willis realisation montage, the part where you went ‘Ahhh, so he’s DEAD!’ Then there’s the ensuing ‘Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, I haven’t seen it yet’ from those yet to view the ‘I totally didn’t see that coming’ moment. This seemed to open the floodgates for dead/non-dead interaction as a recurring theme. Within no time the made-for-TV movie ‘Living with the Dead’ appeared, starring acting behemoths Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. Didn’t see it? Nor did I…

It’s 2 am, and I am watching ‘Raines’. It’s not particularly good, but I guess that’s what you expect at that time. Well that, and those call-in quiz shows where people try and guess the top 10 most obscure things you would find in a sock drawer, with little success. I will guiltily admit to sometimes watching them. But I’ve never seen anyone guess a right answer. Ever.  

 The only saving grace of ‘Raines’ is acting legend Jeff Goldblum. Goldblum has acting chops: He has saved the Earth with a Powerbook, beaten off Velociraptors with a stick, and has even broken a guy’s forearm in an arm wrestle. That is epic. It is his trademark dry sarcasm that keeps me from falling asleep, well, that and the cumulative affects of the day’s coffee intake.

"Hi, I'm Jeff Goldblum, and welcome to my crib..."

But even the in presence of Goldblum, I was irked by the premise of the show: A detective solves crimes by talking to the dead victims whose murders he is investigating. Irritating huh? It seems that every channel you turn over to, there is someone communicating with the not-so-alive-anymore…

I think about something (hypothesis)> I think about it some more (experiment) > I write about it (conclusion). My science teachers taught me well.