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.