Dale: "All this stuff, you know, -- you know, sort of, stuff and things, I'm really missing ... you know ... my family."

Stuff and sort of nonsense.

Didn't quite understand all the Sara and Darnell stuff and things, you know. But it's all a typical sort of BB mating-dance, I'm sure. Things will shake out into their due place.

The ultimate Shakesperean moment last night: Darnell in Othello mode, head lowered pitifully: "I'd rather be in Hell than Heaven..."

Yes, some touching moments last night.

===============================

The lubrication and regurgitation by our wise but scatoloical blindman represented one of the highlights of TV in all times and tradtions of TV.

Dale and Stu should go off together, arm in arm, heads bent, and like a part of the drunken group in The Tempest --- steeped in a quenched kaleidoscope of boring good looks disfigured by self-dramatised pining and mean mouths.

Vote for a dual eviction!

Rachel's washing up, Rex/Nicole machinations, Lisa's stern smirks of stolid Wagnerianism, Mo's complte abandon to putting everybody off as a way to win BB - all these things are just the flatulence of sprouts spread on the summer air like tedious spent Biblical plagues of pointlessness.

============================

THAT'S THE WAY TO DOOO IT!

Puppets R Us.

Puppets can be very funny. But they can be pathetic, or emblems of death as in Ligotti fiction. The HMs are puppets too, with BB as the marionette-master.

Mikey is already a puppet figure of sorts in his benighted world. He also suffers - with his usual piquant charm - the frequent alarms towards creating his own stick-puppet games ... as controlled himself in turn by BB ...

Mo seems to like his feminine shoes he's been made to wear, already clopping around like a puppet before his task begins.

Darnell never had a girl friend before? Sara stringing him along for the sake of the show?
Stringing him along? There we go again.

============================

With the Nicole-Rex terrorganza of a televised relationship played out in a semi-dramatic, learned-script-way, knowing all the time that it is natural and painful, both performed for cameras and truly felt - this is probably one of the highlights of TV 'drama' to match all the Wednesday Plays and Plays of the Month and Armchair Theatres of classic TV drama of the past (which you don't get any more as drama) all merged together and one can only sit back and gasp at all the real-and-unreal angles of the situation, gasping with admiration at the 'performances', and gasping with pathos and bathos amid the stupidities and typical intense couple-infighting spiralling out of control as, indeed, over-control meets submission and vice versa in almost a strobing rhythm.

When one comes to judge the people involved one has to tussle through that sort of sick kaleidoscope - and even then, I am unsure whether this couple had all this planned out and BB is the sucker, not the couple. Rex's recipe to end all recipes.

The table-tennis performance was superb and seemed to symbolise in a stylised way some of the implications above. The black-draped people being the demons that BB has set loose...

Kat and Mikey are fast becoming strong contenders, whatever the cynicism behind their performances.

The rest of the HMs have meanwhile taken backseats as bigger fish are fried on the big wide antique smoke-misted cinema screen in the distance above the heads of the audience.

=============================

A low-key summary programme after all the creative excitement of the puppets and the Nicole-Rex involutions. A suitcase can calm many a nerve, like a snail reunited with its sinistral shell.

MonkFish-faced Dale is going, then. He is far moe inscrutable than given credit for. I really think he is slightly twisted inside. Which brings us back, neatly, to the involutions of a snail. Indeed one can imagine Dale with slimy knobby horns. He really is that bizarre. His beefcake exterior is all front. Indeed if you look closely at him, his body is ill-shaped, too, except - like a body-conjuror - it has the illusion of good looks.

Mikey was certainly spot-on re Rex. Mikey has taken over Luke's role of Greek Chorus.

in·vo·lu·tion
Pronunciation: ˌin-və-ˈlü-shən
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin involution-, involutio, from involvere
Date: circa 1611
1 a (1): the act or an instance of enfolding or entangling : involvement (2): an involved grammatical construction usually characterized by the insertion of clauses between the subject and predicate b: complexity, intricacy
2: exponentiation
3 a: an inward curvature or penetration b: the formation of a gastrula by ingrowth of cells formed at the dorsal lip
4: a shrinking or return to a former size
5: the regressive alterations of a body or its parts characteristic of the aging process <skeletal involution due to loss of estrogens at menopause>

================================

Well, Dale the Snail is afraid of moths?
He fabricated joy at the surpise arrival of Jen. He's thinking of Hello Magazine. I don't think Dale is all that he seems. But that's irrelevant now. He's gne.

Back to Tyrranosaurus Rex.

=================

I don't think we are on opposite sides, Marion, but I do think Rex and Nicole are as bad as each other. And you can glimpse the fermenting monster in both of them, worse than any monster that they currently already are.

I do beleve the Sara-Darnell-Stu thing is a set piece. A show for the cameras, to which all are implicit. Darnell is not innocent as he makes out. He is very streetwise. You can see it in his amblng gait. And the knowing smirk glimpsed beneath the mock-embarassed laugh.

=================

When Mikey is in the DR talking about people and events of the day, he sounds as if he is commentating on the end of an exciting race in the Olympics.

The Cakes of London will be used by our own Olympics committe as templates for iconic stadiums in 2012.

Rachel did right to choose Mikey's instinctive design for a sick Dome. Better than many exhibits in the Tate Modern, I say.
Full of loving Mikey-slimes.

Rex continues to act in character.

Rachel had to come off the fence. She deserves a gold medal for the high jump.
I'm not sure she is really upset, though. She knows after all that all this is nothing but another game. They should have BB tasks in the Olympics.

==================

Indeed. Mikey would make a good boss in any busniess that needs to see quick results. He is actually quite amazing with skills that transcend (or derive from?) his blindness. He is also a bit wild. Maybe that's the secret. He is a braintstormer.

I see that both Mikey and Darnell have become Cone Zeros !

Lisa is very strong - and has become a detached force - more considered than Luke ever was. She stands a chance.

Rex and Nicole continue to be an aberrant force. Belly-button and dare-kisses, included. Marion, you're right about your observations above about the kissing in this context.

Mo is a loose cannon.

Rachel has become a curtain. On silent runners. She needs an eye-patch.

And Kat secretly strokes her log.

=======================

last night, I didn't understand many of the intense conversations. Reminded me of Bedlam or the 'Marat Sade', particularly with the bald heads.
Enjoyed the rapping of Rex, Mo and Darnell at one stage.

The Duckie water that Mikey sprays around - seemed apt (A-P.T) as did Rex's threat of pissing on Mike - because in the early days, one could easily imagine scatological Mikey actually carrying out such a threat. In tune with the mucks and messes he created with the Dome Cake.

Rex and Nicole are a symbol of couples these days in certain celebrity circles. A nigtmare worthy of this Forum that deals, at least in part, with the Horror arts.

Darnell as Black Static? or White Noise?

=============

The House task is a mock-Olympics, complete with opening ceremony, flag-waving parades and endurance tests for all, where less than 100% effort entails losing the luxury budget. Bizarrely, this is 'overseen' by a blind Mikey with golden baggy bifurcated golden raiment (wielding a megaphone to spur people on), looking and acting like a clown-like bald-headed cheer-leading Gandalf with a white wand.

Most of this task is done with happiness and aplomb. Lisa twirling ribbons (having spent the previous part of the day applying eye-shadow) was particularly good. The House came together – but later there was a row about someone pinching Rex's cider where Rex accuses Mo of lying.

The highlight however was a double act of gradually increasing tearful sorrowful hugs by Rachel & Kat, upon the news that Rachel had been nominated for eviction (along with Stu), where they had orginally started off vowing to each other that they would not cry, to save the other from crying, but ending up with both crying.

Rex says he has never been wrong so far in predicting who is to go on eviction night. This time he says Rachel will go.

=======================

Daaay 70

Mo's "Trying to be Me" and was the most interesting character today. Coining that phrase in Diary Room conveys much of the existential angst embodied by BB at its best. Mo is almost admitting to insanity as his self-described paranoia grows, and wondering who is fake or not. And the ultimate conundrum is whether he himself is fake by thus fulfilling the role of this new-born Mo-ism?

Mikey fulfilled the shopping task by guessing enough times who would win the Olympic events: The Short Jump, Feather-Throwing, Floating-with-a-small-tropical-island-attached-to-the-groin etc.

Rachel was fulfilling another aspect of her essential Rachel-ism by caringly nursing Heaven and Hell, the goldfish, and then breaking down in tears when Heaven finally went to Heaven. Nicole at least showed her real feelings (probably the least fake of all the HMs) by gaining no credit with the audience in her mocking of Rachel's tears about something as trivial as a dead goldfish!

Lisa said she dreamed of famous Olympic athletes in the BB House. Darnell and sara have another intense tete-a-tete, as do Mo and Kat. Re the latter, were they talking in code about nominations?

Sara is deemed the fakest faker of them all.

Well, I guess Stu is going tonight, after Rachel's dizzy egg-race .... and exploiting the dying goldfish. But that's me being cynical.

===========================================

And now we have a raw brain, courtesy of Mikey. Seems appropriate.

Seems I was right about Mo and Kat talking in code.

Stu with the black-painted nails and the quirky  (if handsome) clowny face to go!  Rachel and Kat slobber together in celebration.

Rex continues to complain in raw bass tones as a continuous undergrunt on the soundtrack, while Nicole acts like a spoilt sixth-former.

Mo wildly thrashes between paranoia and selfishness - with a batman mask made from a black bin-liner.

Nothing changes.  The theatre of absurdity waddles grotesquely on towards its approaching crunch. You can't credit how quickly the summer has almost gone...

========================

I enjoyed Stu's crowd-surfing. (What he may be remembered for).

=================

Rachel said she once dreamed of being in the House even before dreaming of being in the House...
She's a hard-bitten film star acting sweet innocence... jiving with Kat ...

Nicole and Rex - surely they rehearsed these parts they play. No couple could be so embittered and still survive as a couple, otherwise?

There's a lot I don't follow any more. Codes withing codes within codes.

Mikey continues to be straight with what's what. He surely must win.

========================

Nicole justifiably complains at Rex. He has not made her life easy in the house. Smothering her in self-referred love. Also expecting, perversely, self-defeatiingly, for her to break BB rules to please him. Maybe being head of house will be able to fill his moral vacuum.

Scary thought that Mikey's last sight before he went blind was a doctor in a mask. I wonder what all our last sights will be before we leave this mortal coil. Mikey already knows his.

Sara and Mo getting closer? Sara seems to be the little town flirt.

The statues were a tableau ... an ingredient in an old-fashioned garden party. A scene set to be disrupted by William and the Outlaws.

=====================

 I think Rachel and Mikey are a very good choice for potential winners.

But who knows what charms have held Mo in the house this long. The same charms could be stronger than any of us think.

The Rex and Nicole situation has at least landed us with a *real* situation even if half of it is concocted. She looked elfin and pathetic in her hood as she smoked at the end of the prgramme. A bit like fleetingly glimpsing Michael Jackson's face in Maysoon's.

Darnell is a cool dude who acts highly strung. Or highly strung who tries to act cool. I can imagine him as a strong visual force shambling amid the jungle of the streets where he lives, like a savage sleek ghost.

I wonder if I should have a heart attack and die while watching Big Brother whether - in that drowning moment of past and future dreams - I will think it was all worth while? Even so, I do not think I tempt Fate. Fate is already written, like Nicole crucified on a full mankini.

====================

Nicole - elfin earlier ... now rat-faced? But what about Rex the Rat - but who knows things get mixed up in the BB house: t. winter-damon - in 'best of df lewis' (1993) But I do agree Nicole to go on Friday. For the record, this bit's in white: Mo ate Mikey's bogey (for the record ... or rather for the cider). If I were younger (like my avatar), I'd think Rachel would make a good Mummy, with common sense. Still Kat would make a pretty mean Mummy, too. Handing out the cookies to her brood. Hope they don't have whiskers.

========================== A pity Maysoon's still not about to dance the Michael Jackson part...'. Well, with the dolls heads, French mime task, the puppeteering and now the zombie Thriller video there seems to be a theme of sorts running through this BB... Stringing each other along, jerking each other off ... I suspect Rex and Nicole are stringing us (the viewers) along... Who holds the strings that control the strings ... the audience, Big Brother, Channel 4? Maybe I am indeed dead and I'm about to get up and have my limbs jerked in rhythm after typing this mindlessly... DNA string theory... ========================= Well, after yesterday's zany zombies we have Darnell's method of destroying his own doubts about someone: kill that person (metaphorically). A bit like an albono Michael Jackson about to drop a baby from a hotel window... Sara gives up her flirting for woman-weeping ... wailing like a baby about to be mock-dropped from a window, And Nicole Nobody leaves the house with her spiteful, rodent face intact. I wonder if she'll be booed. Rex looks pleased, although he speaks sad. Meanwhile mean Mo lurches from one self-indulgent faux pas to another. ========================= I thinks Nasty Nic (hard as nails) coped with the interview well and remained true to herself. She seemed to be sincerely sorry about her treatment of Mikey - in hindsight. And I do suspect that Mikey brought on the behaviour of Rex and Nic in that Thriller task - for his own showmanship reasons. I'm sure Nic (and Rex eventually) will do well from BB. OF COURSE, though, they don't deserve to do so. ========================= These men are all comic book sub-heroes fighting imaginary wars - for damsels whose raison d'etre is to be catalysts for irrational emotions. Meanwhile, Mikey tilts at windbags. Quite good at this, despite being blind. A becalmed episode tonight. Stuck in the Sargasso Sea as Kat summons up makeshift depths for her emotions to fathom and then fill. And Rex is back to apologising for being unforgiveable. PS: Yes, Marion, Rex's playcards were funny. He was straight with his apology about his misreading, though. ========================= But tonight's programme ended with Darnell calling Rex the Puppet-Master. That sort of complements this year's theme, I guess. But other than that, I seriously made no more sense of tonight's programme than I did of the huge bowl of spaghetti. Turgid and needs unravelling. Shakesperean motivation all tangled up. Mo, for me, is the biggest enigma of all. Greek Democracy was at play too with the HMs' withdrawing of entertainment being more entertaining than the entertainment that was withdrawn.   ========================= That's quite right. Darnell scattermongering tangled grievances and Mo impulsively feasting on inscrutability.

 

Kat's biscuit-banshee is in my nightmare too.


And the Presbyterian Mikienster? I'm sure he's ever a-hunting to haunt those who slip into selfishness and ego-excess.

Sleep is blindness, but for the dreams. Yet dreams, like crystal balls, are probably realler than what they contain. Real or not, we rationalists ignore any such signs upon our running noose called life.

Well, I thought the Mario-Lisa thing yesterday was extremely sick-making and contrived. Sorry, Marion.

============================

Mo does seem to have a charmed life. This time probably because those voting for him as HoH felt he was the one least likely to do well with the public when push comes to shove in the final. What were those pieces of paper he (and Kat?) was crying over?? A mystery to me?

Another mystery to me was the Darnell-Rex vs Sara situation. Was this just a misfired attempt to spice up the entertainmemnt in an otherrwise low-key episode? Or something far more insidious? Judging by Marion's comments, it is the latter.

Kat's face bursting into tears. Mikey's self-satisfied silent lounging. Rachel's innocent excitement at non-excitement? All ingredients in a slow fizzling-out of BB this season. A shame really when there have been some genuine high points of both reality and fabrication this season, too.

=======================

Yes, Mikey stole the show as Kiki Dee. I'm sure he really enjoys dressing up - as does Mo. Stocking-feelers - was that a joke Davina cracked? Rex and Darnell were justly scolded for their treatment of Sara. However, of the two, I feel Rex is the most sinister. (Darnell is just confused). But Darnell received - over all - the biggest stigma. Albino Crucified - a painting in El Prado by Dali. Sara is a tease, though. She was complicit in many ways - an easy smile pushing through her (fabricated?) gloom. As Sara and Lisa (why Lisa??) were nominated for eviction, the Prisoner's Dilemma task was a costly damp squib for Ch 4. I'm sure if some of the others were chosen, the outcome would not have been so predictable. BB has become too much of a show show, rather than the (un)reality show it used to major on. The HMs in and out of the bedroom while the sets and scenes are continuously changed. The HMs have become too 'show' savvy over the years.

======================= Sara to go? Late into house, true. But flirt/tease. A catalyst for fun. Lisa to go? Cheesy engagement to Mario!! Yes Lisa to go! Rex still banging on about the Millennium Dome cake! Kat and Rachel are ne'erdowell do-gooders! Mikey must win, really. Mo exploded like a terrorist bomb and sprayed the DR walls with bodily innards and half-digested burger. ============================= Lisa, bye! I think she was too stolid, too much an expressionless stalwart, the other half of Mario .... a circus act slightly gone to seed. I think the rest of them are suffering from an uncommon disease. Uncommon, because few people are allowed to suffer it. End-of-BBitis - where many recriminations, bluffs, double-bluffs, thoughts, thoughts about thoughts they thought they thought, asides, confusions, assumptions etc all come together and curdle and fizz and backbite... What else can one say? Kat and Rachel took a backseat tonight because they have not only lost the plot, they have lost even the desire not to lose it. ======================== Lisa presented a dilemma in her interview - to relish her unintended zaniness or to deplore her innocent boring ordinariness. A paradox, which really shows that there is more to her than I can put my finger on. So perhaps you're right, Marion. She was part of a show-business couple, even before going into the House, I reckon. That grates. ====================== Well, Kat compared Darnell's 'boner' to a chup chupa lollipop. That should make some good material for Mikey's stand-up comedian act he apparently conducts in the outside world! He is a very crude boy! Sara hugged Darnell's white prickly beachball of a head in the pool... She really is a a goofy girl. Rex is beginning to look the winner, despite my terrible misgivings about this... The only one who has truly been himself? I note Rachel was very excited about the beans she had for dinner. ========================== Rex: "Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero..." ===================== For me, Fiction and Reality can become symbiotiic on some occasiosn when looking at BB - as long as one can otherwise withstand the shallow selfishnesses that often abound. I think Mikey craves celebrity. I gather he is (or is hoping to be) the country's only blind stand-up comedian! I sense his BB 'act' was well fore-planned. As also was Kat's. Rachel is indeed a mystery. ====================== It was classic BB, too, the programme with those 2 evictions. Rex also looked genuinely upset. Be intersting to see the others' reactions tonight. I think Darnell still could win - despite Davina giving the game away (by implication) that he would have done better about 3 weeks ago. My heart says Rachel. My head says Mikey will win. Another Pete, in many ways. =================== Marion wrote: I don't know why, but I found Mikey and Rex's silent water fight in the garden oddly moving. Blind Mikey stalked silent Rex, not so confident in his mask, and each tossed sparkling water at the other. ... The stuff of BB. Rex is sometimes child-like, even childish in both his brashness and his naive sense of awe at the things going on in the BB house. Why are people voting for him, one wonders. At least a good few must be voting for him Rachel packing Kat's case was poignant. I still don't know whether she's consistently method-acting all the time she's been in the house. Mikey must be the favourite. He is a one-person walking Sixties Happening, however fake in his art of righteousness and honourable putdowns of Rex. However Tate Modern. (Genuinely?) chuffed at his apparent votability with the public, Darnell slopes and shambles around the house like an eskimo simian. I hope that doesn't get me into Wendy Richard sort of trouble. ================== we mustn't forget perhaps BB is a game in which various measures (measures that can misfire as this one did) are taken by the contestants to win (or not). Or Rex was genuinely annoyed at a whole bag of chick peas being thrown around the room and he genuinely thinks Rachel has been method-acting the innocent from day one. ====================== Quote from Rex right at the end: "This year the show's not been about being good but about being real." I think Mikey will win. He seemed to be pelased to 'watch' an edition of BB. I love the image of Rachel that she's created for herself. And after all, in real life, she 's probably like that, too! Interesting by a certain pretence of being boring!? A new paradox. Sara is feisty and flirty. Probably real. Darnell: oblique and jaunty, with an edge of darkness. I thought the raps were good. ======================= Well done, Marion. Your two choices are 1st and 2nd. But which is going to be which? Mikey, the self-confessed Circus Clown will be the winner!! Only apt for this Ligotti-inspired BB. But will there B another BB? I'm told this BB has had the lowest ratings ever. ========================== Very surprised! Well done, Rachel - Mother and generally nice person. Perhaps this is a turning-point for our Society. ========================= Snow-white Rachel Rice (previous child co-star in a Hugh Grant film) won fair and square. But NOT a good result for BB and Ch4, I guess. She also appeared in Sherlock Holmes on TV and has this site: http://www.rachel-rice.co.uk/ ========================= CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER 2009 HERE: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/celebrity_big_brother_2009.htm

 

Dale seems a very strange creature of the impulsive quirk. His gesture towards Rex's private parts after squirming in face of Rex's questions about what he had meant .... was quite bizarre. Dale is a pixie in disguise.

Rex and Bex...

Rex is King-in-his-own mind.

Marion's portrait of Bex as a St Trinian's girl is a simply brilliant observation.

Stuart (like Dale) is typical of men of his age who speak in riddles. In comes from a lifetime of texting and emailing, coupled with a male pride in paradoxically voluble terseness.

Mario was rabbiting on again last night about risk assessments.

Rachel met the first tragedy in her cocooned life. Not being able to prance around on moving escalators.

As to me being on BB, Gary, I would end up spouting, like Luke, as if I'm writing one of these posts to this thread. Moments of rare original observation but essentially detached, essentially not there, immune to any real human advances that the rarefied internet (where I live these days) cocoons me from.

 ===================================

Painting smudged, face splashed.
A combination of events - (mainly Jen's incapability to accept Rex's apology (an apology that had been seriously given) regarding an admittedly stupid act of vandalism but, after all, an act done in the context of the Big Brother Show) - led to all sorts of repercussions and already pent-up emotions to explode. BB was right to evict Dennis and Dennis was right, eventually, to be ashamed of his behaviour. I was also dismayed at behaviour by Stu, Dale and Bex.

Quite sorry to see Sylvia go. She had a bit of spirit, although two-faced and petulant and childish.

================================

I thought BB did a good job in drawing the line under the previous night's events - as did the HMs themselves, eventually.

At first I thought Darnell and Mohammed came out with best credit, but I did not like their triumphalism when Sylvia went.

There are a lot of lessons for human behaviour in recent events.


The chocolate in Luke's ear incident was light relief. However, I have gone off Luke, big time. And I have more regard for Mario.

===============================

Tedious and maddening tonight. Rex is right. I think he probably wants to leave. I sense viewers also feel they are entangled in the meaningless backbiting and will also want to leave, by switching off. It's like watching a family gradually grow dysfunctional. Bex, Dale and Jen are becoming monsters of deliberate negativity. But some of the nices ones like Kat, Darnell and Luke are becoming part of the downward spiral. A nightmare of convoluted arguments. For a change Mikey was good in the DR tonight. And one can forgive his uncothness. Beginning to think Mario should win!!!!!!!!!!!!! Still bewildered by Rachel's blank slate, despite some trial chalk marks upon it tonight. I'm beginning to like none of them. classical music for the cleaning was admirable

======================================= Yes, flat, flat, flat... If the summary shows the interesting bits, what must the rest be like? It still gives me lessons in life and artifice, though. Mikey's description of blind person's dreams, for example. What are they doing at Mario's workplace without him for 3 months? Health and Safety gone hang? Risk assessment and Facilitation dropped for darts matches with human darts-boards? Lisa is something out of a Bosch painting. And it's official - I no longer understand the sexual politics of this group of Housemates. It's an avant garde film that was once one pretended to understand in the Sixties but now makes as little sense as it ever did. Jen now begins to look like an evil Snow White, as her mind begins to create pitfalls from once smooth skin. Mind over matter. A Hammer horror film where chronic, cronic truth shows through youth by black magic. ======================================== Luke is court jester, dramatic chorus, shakesperean clown, repressed soul, sometimes malvolio -in-turpitude... Bex is the Clod-of-the-Remove who'd try and entice even Billy Bunter further than he would like to go with girls, even with the temptation of a cream bun... Jen is the silver-tongued foundling elfess who leaps from forfeit to forfeit in a game of Touch-me-if-you-can-understand-me-long-enough... Dale and Stu are doleful elves who've lost their selves, but perk up when they they think long and hard enough about perking up - but it's a slow ignition and nobody is sure if they have any sex drive at all, except the show kind. Rex to go, simply because he's not eye candy. Mario and Lisa are not tenuous clowns in the Luke mode - they are real circus slapstick roustabouts. Tit and bum and mock-cuddles laced with moments of pseudo-seriousness when they show that even tumblers have some regard for safety. Mikey sees it all. ======================================== Zoo task - all a bit flat, despite the colourful costumes. Throwing buckets of tuna fish brine all over Jen is rather appealing, though. Hard to decide on the eviction - I think Luke is right in saying it will be the public's vote on who they blame for picturegate and its repercussions. I personally blame Jen. But I think Rex is more suitable for going - for his own sake - The Kipling task sounds a difficult one to me. I wonder if, generally, blind people can learn poetry by heart better than sighted people. The description of Rachel as someone with 'Gordon Brown' smiles was quite intriguing. Can't say I've noticed it in her. Rachel and Kat in a rendition of Happy Happy House is both cringingly awful and strangely uplifting... ============================== Mikey was hirrarious extemporising Kipling and then shaving his eyebows in an attempt to get nearer the 'satiable curtiosity'. Kat screeches out loud and then screeches quietly inside. Bex and Rex clash antlers. ================================ Missed the new arrivals. And the eviction. Horror! And video was mistimed. Thanks for keeping me up to date above, Marion. Rex must have been astonished! ===================================== Goats and Monkeys! Tribes and Constellations! Balanced stars: Luke Luke Luke and Belinda Belinda Belinda. Two articulate giants. The game indeed starts now. Flat has become full. The two younger new ladies seem very nice. Rex has perked up. I have perked up! Bex's wild flaming has been doused. I note Mario was a postman for 22 years. ===================================== A complex house. Burning Rex's pizza on purpose seemed a bit nasty. Luke is either quite nasty in himself or has become that through the unnatural focres of reality TV. Mario has a cynical streak... and a power to self-believe beyond the margins of his eesence as a cipher. Out-of-the-body Lisa - why am I not surprised by that? Belinda 'Vanessa Felz' is a real show-woman. Snores like Ken Russell. And will cause ructions. The personality forces are tightening into knots of unpredictable tentacles. Quite like Sarah and Maysoon. Rachel, too. All in a quiet way, allowing me to relax and not worry too much about the tentacles tightening elsewhere. Darnell is still my favourite for winning (from day one). Mind-over-Kat is one dream too far .... watching her float towards the ceiling. I don't know if Kat is genuine or just another Belinda with a better disguise? ================================ I'd've thought Lisa - with her mind-over-matter powers - would have been able to get out of a paper-bag more efficaciously. This season of BB is indeed Pinteresque, almost fustian to the nth degree. Luke is my old auntie. Weepy, creepy, inscrutable, immutable - the collective consciousness creature of BB9 squirms upon a crumbling plinth like a Lovecraftian Old One knitting its own tentacles. Meanwhile, the House's genius loci defaults to an aura of BelindaBelindaBelinda. Or BeLukeBelukeBeluke. Or BeLisa Beacon. The Bebex and Berex of the shallow night. ======================= The trouble is I keep hearing Luke's intonations and timbres and sing-song nagging speech-vocals in my mind's ear all day and all night. It's like a nightmare. ======================== I enjoyed Stu and Dale's imitation of Belindax3 in the DR. Her rendition of 'Over The Rianbow' was over the top, more like. She sounds as if she is at home pretending to be famous into an old reel-to-reel tape-recorder. Belisa Beacon Big-Ears is an unwilling partner I guess in the M/L relationship. It is indeed a (show)business reationship. Luke, as Gary suggests above, is indeed a bit like Paul O'Grady. Or more Lily Savage. I can see Luke one day sitting at his TV show desk with a white doggy doing a cheap imitation of Mikey! Maysoon to win. Or Darnell. Bex to go. We can save Mario for another day. We need to maintain this show as the ultimate Horror that even true Horror specialists (populating some of the Discussion Boards I attend) cannot stomach.   ================================ And the two priate-ship bedrooms approach, stowaways, drummer-boys and boarding-parties readying themselves to come alongside amid all the loose cannons. Belinda is highly strung, on the brink of caterwauling Lloyd Webber favourites, also in a deep ricochet of loose gunfire from Mario and Mikey - with Lisa torn between her own common sense and Mario's. Paranoia and Conspiracy stalk between the bedrooms. Bex or Mario? I don't think we've wrung sufficient hot air-mail from Mario: the post-office messenger who conducts recorded delivery betweeen his head and the health&safety valve in his backside. So Bex to go. Did Bex accuse Kat of being over-the-top?! =========================== Biblical too in their nonsense-speak (just one rung below Street Speak). Biblical too in their inappropriate references. Pontius Pilate. Wash the face with flour. Crucify the Rebecca. Rachel Mildeyes. Darnell - White Icon. Mario Iscariot. Maysoon Magdalena. Luke was good in the DR - spelling out Rebecca and Mario as acronyms of their personalities. For me, if I were in the DR, Luke would be Lily-livered Underhand Kiddy Eunuch. What were all those shenanigans with the alcohol at the end. i think all of them are underhand! An avant garde drama acted by actors who've only half learned the script. Like the Irish dancing.   ============================= Your description of the task, Marion, reminds me of how the whole event approximated the dark absurdity of a Ligotti tale with over-made-up clowns and puppets - driven by an ill-timed beat from the the malleable anvils of a soft-furnished Hell. ======================== Mario facilitates his own exit as well as future puppy love between Bex and Luke, removed the custard cream from the biscuit and passed it over for others to ooze. I loved Lisa's rendition of Schoenberg songs in the Diary Room. Genuine modern classical vocals. No joke. Lisa is indeed a dark horse, now. With her steely glances, big ears and mind-over-matter skills, she could be the new novelty act to beat. The new clockwork clown with marionette muscles padded by silicon. ============================ Having slept on it, I feel that Lisa is not only a dark horse but someone upon whom the Universe has endowed winning, simply becauase the Universe deems it so. Who knows what motives underlie the Universe. We should rename Lisa as Gaia. Or Pontius Pilate. Yes, I've ceased warming to Darnell. And Luke is far too clever for his own boots. Posh and Bex? Can't see it really. =========================== Mario didn't really *get* the connection with Ricky Gervais during his interview last night. Lisa will know, though. Lisa is beyond human frailty. The washing-up etc is just an Earth Mother front for stern, unwavering, MrSpock-eared Goddesshood. ======================= The caryatid that is Lisa Indeed. But there is no accounting for the reverse-Medusa effects of the Universe. She will outstare anyone. ====================== I think Maysoon is Michael Jackson in disguise. ========================  can't say I remember noticing Lisa's underwear - even less noticing it with a discerning eye. But Lisa is fast becoming an underworn, understated force in my book of BB9. One of those characters - when writing a fiction - who starts off as a minor character but grows exponentially, in an autonomous fashion, beyond the control of author or reader. Bex as bunny-boiler? Luke's burgeoning sexuality (another autonomous force growing exponentially?)? Yes, one needs to unsuspend BB disbelief in order to live with oneself even to observe this objectively! The balance of Bex and Darnell - instinctive assumptions back and forth in destructive symbiosis. Another glimpse of a a monster or ghost even beyond the shock of glimpsing Michael Jackson in the House! ======================== Everyone gradually defaults to character. It's like a life time from birth (entrance) to death (eviction or victory) with fast-motion personality-changes that point towards the end result of their BB self rather than their real self. Darnell has become BBD. Luke BBL. Bex BBB. Lisa BBL. Rachel BBR. Dale BBD. Kat BBK. StuBBS. Maysoon BBM. Sara BBS. Rex BBR. Mikey BBM. Mo BBM. Belinda BBBBB. I've become BBD. Marion BBM. BBM and BBD win! Three each. EDIT: Sorry. BBM wins with four! ========================= I think Bex can sometimes be very vulture. ========================== There was something very Fellini about the Heavenly costumes, hugely buzzing around like Piers Anthony or Cordwainer Smith creatures sufficiently clownishly done also to be Ligottian. I agree that sparks are going to fly. Bex eating 'penis' in the DR was a BB moment to ... cherish or forget? Darnell is an emotional bloke, with a body that autonomously reflects both his highs and lows. I suspect his mind knows what his body's doing. And I suspect he knows what he's doing vis a vis the ultimate prize. Heaven? No, the £100,000 prize Darnell is now the Facilitator! ============================= Does Darnell have the authority to move housemates between Heaven and Hell. Only William Blake can do that? I always enjoy Mikey's nominating in the DR. His voice and Luke's haunt my dreams. And Rex's sometimes. Bex's is in my nightmares. I must say the apparent non-punishment of wild vandalism with water-bombs ete etc is not a good message when we are all concerned with youth crime. It looks as they often damage property during their high jinx. And talking about jinx, it is good they have Lisa still among them keeping any boogies at bay with her stern spells. PS: I'm going to miss the next episode or two unless I catch the episodes on the internet. (Channel 4i)   ============================ Just caught it on Channel 4 iplayer. Merci pour excellent reportage, Mme Marion. Oooh la la. I love the mime by Rachel and Maysoon. They did very well; it's harder than it looks. Also loved the music to this. Ensemble Wind is one of my weaknesses. Rex could now mature into an interesting BB contestant. Don't like him, though. Mo was very good when acting a Frenchman, as you say. The Bike task is overall a bit cruel. But Belinda was over-acting her distress, I feel, Marion, in an attempt to capture sympathy after the announcements of nominations...   =========================== Rebecca slithering like a snake (having just swallowed an ass) along the corridor was another Biblical moment. Darnell was either very clever or very stupid in the gratuitous rudeness trick he played on Sara. I wonder if that will be considered, in hindsight, as BB9's turning-point. Stu, Lisa and Mikey, as you say, came out well from the French task. Must also sympathise with Dale finding various brands of red wine as tasting of ... surprise, surprise ... red wine. But did not sympathis with his don't-care attitude. The baguette task was impossible. I was conceived over a Baguette Bar. =========================== Belinda Belinda Belinda Bye Bye Bye Stu's performance should win an Oscar. Almost believed him. I also suspect Darnell suffers from action-implementation at cross-purpose with intention. Rex is beginning to enjoy not enjoying BB.   ========================== Belinda Able Din Bad Line Dale Bin The Universe speaks in riddles. ========================= I found it all a bit bitty tonight. Too many oblique, sometimes inaudible, conversations. They've certainly rumbled Kat. I agree with Mikey there. And Rachel's incantation: "But I'm happy" is indeed a self-persuasive philosophy of life that may catch on. But if she's an average person, she's ceased to be that simply by being chosen for BB. A paradox. Maysoon's rare DR appearance wasn't inspiring. She's certainly taking the art of pacing herself to extremes. ============================ Rachel, Darnell... All very Shakespearean: BB has ever been thus. A modern Amorality Drama - with morals and immorals playing hide-and-seek with guile and guilt disguised as innocence (innocence in the two senses of being the opposite of both guile and guilt), all seasoned with mock soliloquys and even mockier death-scenes. ========================= A lot of rash gamesmanship tonight. Brinkmanship with bananas: eating the fruit only leaves the skins, and we all know from our childhood comics what the skins can do to one's health & safety! Or maybe they will bake the skins then smoke them? I wonder if Mario is watching. Lisa gone back to low-key mode. Maysoon, Mo and Kat tried to cut loose tonight. Strange motivations and gambles. Bex has enhanced the persona she's moulding for herself by spending less time hanging up as a gorilla than dressing up to be one ! Rachel, too, with her designer-averageness and preening boringness. Darnell, I repeat, is either very clever or very stupid. Still not convinced which. Only monkeys can be manipulated by the artful poistioning of bananas.

========================

I'm still recovering from the final 5 minutes last night! I thought I then dreamed of Zeppelins and Barrage Balloons and wind-socks and Dali-esque (not Dale-esque) visions of Hell. But hopefully I didn't.

Judging by all your posts this Summer, Marion, particularly your last one above, you are finding a lot of complex and interesting motivational matters to get your teeth into (and how wonderfully you are indeed doing this for all our constructively creative benefits and thought-provoking 'self'less character-building (real life and fiction) when reading this thread).

I find I only see many of the points you raise after you raise them, and then I say to myself: "Ah, yes, Marion is right." Do you think this is the best BB ever? Or do you really have a soft spot for the erstwhile Jungle Cats?

=====================

A lot of 'good' cameos last night. Mikey 'stabbing' Rex in the literal back (in full 'sight' of both participants). Luke showing his true nature (as you suggest) beneath the normally water-tight Paul O'Grady veneer. Darnell, Dale and Mo speed-biking round the inside of a metaphorical cylinder of death (just like in the old fairgrounds). Except Mo is too pot-belled to stay on for long. Maysoon's slow fuse ... err ... still slow. Kat sliding into repetitive happiness syndrome - less and less convincing. Woman of Steel, Lisa, still a quiet stoical force. Sara & Rachel aberrant contributors to Interaction. Stu stuck in second gear.

Out of the 3 for eviction, taking all into account (only a very small consideration in which process of taking into account is worthiness as a human being), I hope Mo do go.

========================

Dr Who time travelling is like memory: never able to measure, never able to estimate... a thousand clocks in a Ionesco play. Scampering elves forgotten their true selves in the search for time's ringing blows. And Kats have nine lives each. The Shakesperean tragedy that is Darnell: once Head of House, now in prison with eviction over his head, questioned as to his true race: the race to the finishing-line beyond time, beyond cone zero, beyond any motives or emotives as are lost by slipping memory. Rex is King. He is emerging as the one who is playing the cleverest game. Dale also played a clever game in giving the booze to Heaven. Heaven is where one is rewarded. Hell punished. Rex was logical about this. Dale aspirationally Machiaevellian. Rebecca and St Luke in near-concupiscence ... Time will reveal what cogs have been set in motion. The dark Watches of the Night's Movements. ======================== Rachel not the average nice girl, after all? I wonder if we believe the cast rather than the playwright.,, Mikey singing Barbie Doll to himself was a moment to cherish.

======================== All is riddled with truth and lies, separate and over-lapping, in the BB House. Rumours included. I think Rex was test-driving the rumour to see if it sparked a truth or lie from Rachel, rather than her stone-walling as she has done heretofore. Rachel, apparently, in real life, was badly assaulted just before entering the BB House. That may underlie any change in behaviour. But of course I learned that from a lying-machine called a newspaper. Apparentlly, Luke and Bex are now considered to be conniving. There is nothing natural about their relationship and they have a secret language going re nominations etc. Riddles, half-truths, play-actings and full-truths mix and mix again in something that cannot be believed but also cannot be ignored as an Art Happening or as dolls-witthin-dolls-within-dolls psychological insight. =================== Big character Bex has gone and Maysoon remains who - as Davina said - may soon but probably won't.... A big problem for BB. I can't stand Bex but she has been the heart of the BB scene. She was being very deceitful with Luke in the last conversation we saw - but I suspect Luke was, too. It was not a convincing performance from either of them. You see the cogs turning in his head, as Luke said his goodbyes. A whole new ball game for to him to hatch up. He is clever enough to do so, but he is also naive. The drinking game was disgraceful, not least the use of eggs. ===================== Was Kat singing Happy Happy Hell? ================== Seemed like the aftermath of a storm. Dale getting into nots about double negatives vis a vis making himself disliked. Referring to voices that are 'withered and haggard' and squirting Fairy Liquid into his own eyes. Luke bitching ... Darnell and Kat almost in a new aura of Charismatic Religion. Maysoon - now noticed by others because of the storm's disappearance - is quizzed as to whether she is a real person or an icon. Big Brother should take astrological charts of all contestants as part of the audition process. Maysoon is unsurprisingly Libra Sun Sign. ======================== Happy Hell, Happy Hell, Happy Happy Hell: The negatives are positive and so is Darnell   Luke is a great mover and articulator of trends. Which is one step above manipulation (in kat's case, manipulation of gimmicks). A great phrase from Luke spoken aloud to all to describe who is left in the house: gimmicks and deflation. He speaks innuendos aloud but bitches behind backs. ============== So Kat is a celebrity back in Thailand... Figures. Gimmicks like cookie love already prepared. I have crushed chillies on all my meals, but I don't think I would have been able to get into Heaven. Remarkable performances from the 4 winners. Good to see Luke and Dale - like two old age pensioners on a holiday at Butlins - so utterly cheesed off. Mikey is coming back into favour wih me. He has a vicious dryness. Rex, too. Mo is sometimes quite gross.   ========================= First things first, Luke's poignant, tearful performance in the DR. A choice toe-curling cutlet from the BB canon. 75% certain that Luke is a fraud, but a good actor, or a bad actor inasmuch as the acting appeared to be better than it was. As Marion says, it is easier to fabricate a legendary Romance in hindsight rather than in situ. But now I pine to differ from Marion. Rex last night was a man of steely magnificence, with not a care for repercussions but simply for his view of the truth. His view may indeed be wrong. But Rex is King this morning. Rachel and Maysoon are just ciphers amid the World's bigger plan. Self-deceived young ladies? Or just vulnerable humanity on the hoof? ========================== Rex and Dale seem to be self-destructive characters by nature. Dale is the queerest fish of all: even his face is like a monkfish. I hope and expect him to go on Friday. Rex is just as inscrutable, but one can get a handle on Rex. He is a professional chef emulating televisually that F Word Cock-of-the-Cooks whose name I forget. Lisa is quietly coming to the fore again. Rachel was certainly trying to be more feisty last night. Maysoon is still sunk in a swamp of beauty. The task of sorting pastel-shaded hundreds-and-thousands was the most artistically pointless BB task of all time, stoically performed by good teamwork. ======================= Dale has boosted his chances for survival with a well-executed secret task. The 'football' discussion was acting one play with the words of another play. But BB was dribbling with glee in the prompt box. Entertainment! Punishments! Multi-nominations public vote! It was BB's lucky day. It was almost as if BB had scripted it. Rex's girl friend in the House. Certainly a boost fo him to know this. I wonder why he was chosen to be so lucky =================== I am prissy enough to cringe when people start throwing eggs around as part of a drunken game... Dale was effectively cheating with the spirit of the secret task when saying "On my mother's life, it will be bad for the whole house if you choose me." The first time serious immorality has been born from the light-hearted amorality of a game show. Dale must go. The polce interview with Sara was a hoot and a half. Beginning to like her more. Interesting to imagine a hybrid voice made from Luke, Sara and Mikey. The stuff of nightmares. Maysoon has left her slough of beauteous despond. She probably did over-egg her audition vt. Rex was right. ======================== Indeed, as it turned out! He rose and fell with Bex. Too clever by half. Dapper young man with voice of strident bakelite. Mikey - in monkish mode - tonguing like a dog that's swallowed a hot shalott. Rex about to see his girl friend. All sounds like a put up job. Rex who swaggers then careens round the rim of risk. He who dares... ================= Lisa's image of Rachel ogling Mario is quite beyond the reality / unreality spectrum of even BB at its best (or worst?). That and Mo lounging like an overfed dog-slug ... Both quite beyond the pale of Darnell's pierrot-dodging ... slipping past the otherwise amply clogged safety-net of Mario's custard-slicked flannel of a tongue ====================== Yes, Rex wasn't too chuffed at the arrival of Nicole. (I do prefer No. 6 but Nicole has become the Prisoner!) Luke shouted too much during his interview. Not so enamoured with him as you, Marion. But, as you say, others should have gone before he did. ======================= Soppy kissy-kissy Rex has become the 'lad' in love - not squashed by Mario (as in Lisa's threat) but by the fine-toned aquiline Valkyrie called Nicole. Their canoodling over the fence like Pyramus and Thisbe.. Meanwhile, exeunt Lisa and the ghost of a bear called Mario straight into an Extra in the flies. Nobody was really pleased to see her back. They were hoping for fresh blood. The more I think of Luke and Bex, it was truly such an unlikely liaison that the public saw straight though their cynicism. Nicole to win! ======================= The Ziggification of the King. It's Wagnerian as well as Shakespearean in that House now. And Darnell and Sara are getting closer. ====================== Rex and Nicole suitable cases for treatment. This can only end in tears. Darnell & Sara hot up. This time you can believe it's real (unlike Luke pretending to have a crush on someone he would have considered a slag in outside life). Struggling through the alphabet like Mr Ramsey in 'To The Lighthouse' was interesting task. Rachel did well. As she says, she now has to make decisions! A pool of alphabet spaghetti - like an orange stew of story. Makes more sense of reality than any I can fathom these days..   CONTINUED HERE: http://weirdmonger.blogdrive.com/archive/294.html

They've become a group of people each of whom seems to need exorcising of some newly arrived demons or perhaps they've always carried them within themselves as dormant demons. And why did John not nominate Anthony after yesterday? "Bring Back Ziggy" ?? LOL!   ========================== Yes, Mackenzie Crook's laid-back tenor of command was a refreshing change. BUT ... I am a Nerd. Look at the way I give links here to my collected BB comments from 2004! Just look at my avatar to the left! They have pulled the rug from under the feet of all Nerd dignity. Nerds' raison d'etre in life has suddenly been demeaned. Riots in Nerdland. The Prime Minister will have to apologise. Didn't understand the Jerremy/ Emilia argument nor the Project X thing. I think I have lost the plot after all.   ====================== I've just speed-dated last night's episodes. You're right, M, I wouldn't have missed much. And my life would have been made complete without those two silly binge-drinking All Saints girls. And without that flaccid eviction. Amy to win! Jay for 2nd!   ======================= I think Roseanne is a nice puckish lady but she was rather bemused by the stand-up peformances. Jay and Amy were the best for me, Amy's being the most original (dare I say, conceptual)? There's an excellent short story called 'The Human Chair' by Edogawa Rampo. I note that the most negatively 'loose cannon' of an HM (Anthony) failed to become subject to a public eviction vote during the ludicrous nomination process given to the HMs this time. I don't like John too much. He is tarnished by his fast-track to the final (politicians have to ride their luck - or not) and by his arch preciousness. I noted the interesting discussion on Nature versus Nurture and my estimation of Anthony went down even further. The Ninja to win!   ========================= Yes, I was very surprised at Jay's early eviction. He was a major character and performed well in his interview. A maturity beyond his 19 years. I foresee more success for him than any of the others, because he has a definite style, whether one likes or dislikes that style. I still can't get on with John. He is a very political politician, to the extent that his politics have become counter-productive ... if you see what I mean. Politicians often act a part. (Surely not!) I thought Jimmy Carr's hijacking a bit wishy-washy, as I do him! He is just one of those all-purpose talking heads one often sees between the clips on Top 100 Choices of 'Best Film' or 'Worst Behaviour in 2007' or 'Most ugly moment in TV since 1899' charts, like Stewart Maconie   ============================= Quite spurred on by Michael McLaren's hands-on 'team-building' Happening... and the painting bodies. I admired Amy's double-bluff of a rebellious Pop Art stance of not taking her clothes off. She of course gave much added value to the finished 'Jackson Pollock' by helpng to paint the bike's tyres. McLaren's likening the scenting of the bouquet of wine to smelling a pussy was a trifle strange. Monday is final night!!  des2 wrote: ... like Stewart Maconie. Stuart Maconie? I must say I do however enjoy his Freak Zone on Radio 6.   =============================   Emilia being trapped by a thin corrugated paper wall is an interesting comparison with the equal entrapment of being spun by Victor within an invisible centrifugal wall. Amy made an artistic statement to paint with an imaginary body that, although her body, as a projection, could not be seen with the naked eye. But it's there, nevertheless, as represented by the gaps between the other bodies' garish daubs. ==================== Last night, there were some 'out of character' situations. John was unusually vulgar when imitating Emilia. And Amy was flirting with Jeremy in this the dying half-light of the series... This series has been more of an infiltration by foreign bodies than a pure BB exercise with strict rules, rules that usually (when applied) create tensions within a role-playing scenario containing extrapolations of one's own real character (instead of a wizard or dragon etc) mixing truth and fiction. There have been some interesting experiments, some that have misfired and some that have exceeded anything that has gone before in BB. Pity there were so few of the latter. ==========================   Well, congratulations to John. Surprised Emilia was 2nd. And something very uncomfortable about the interviews inside the house. As if all had gone further insane in an already insane universe. I think it was a very small crowd which they tried to make look big. Sad to see Dermot a bit out of his depth on his last BB night. Here's to the Summer and full resumption of the BB rules.

 

 

BIG BROTHER (9) - SUMMER 2008

Continued from here: http://weirdmonger.mindsay.com/big_brother_celebrity_hijack.mws

 

 

MY COMMENTS ON THE TTA PRESS DISCUSSION FORUM (THANKS AS EVER TO MARION):-

====================

 

I see that the new Big Brother (just started) has a cage full of dolls' heads with no eyes!

===========================

Thanks for the aide memoire, Marion. Will you be asking questions later?


Actually, I'm filled with more hope than despair regarding this launch than previous years. And let's all shout THE SUMMER'S NOT THE SUMMER WITHOUT BIG BROTHER! Hooray!

A blind man and and albino. A short Thai girl with cookies. And four people on a secret mission. What more could one want?

I promise to learn the names before next time.

==============================

Hmmm, there is so much going on tonight - not sure what to pick out. I feel sorry for Stephanie. Mario is a bit ham-fisted in the task. Weird how Kathreyia managed to get lost in this House of Tricks. Darnell looks like an early winner. Not sure that I like Luke's voice. Rebecca is the Flutterby Twins in one body! Alexandra the trouble-maker and whinger. Like Rachel & Sylvia. More later perhaps, when I get used to them. The whole set-up promises to be *very* interesting. Especially with the vouchers!   ================================== Not sure I like Darnell, but I still think I spot a winner. Now you describe it like that re the secret mission, it does actually seem rather crude and unfair.   I'm torn between believing this task to be the best or the worst BB task ever. It's so cringe-worthy! And I do feel sorry for Stephanie. It's really doing her head in. Not sure where it's going to end up. ============================ Mikey is a strange cove. Without being blindist, I suspect he can see more than he lets on. An archetypal BB-character. Darnell - a white King Kong. And, tonight, Matthew, I'm Mario Lanza singing "If you were the only girl in the world and I was the only boy" ====================== HIRARIOUS! Actually, no. It was a bit disturbing. Something a bit too fruity about Michael. The girls were quite justified. Even frog-voiced Alexandra was justifed. Definitely don't like Mario. And the secret task, meanwhile, is a clownish travesty. A bad taste in my mouth tonight. Enjoyed Sylvia's recount of Sierra Leone. But overall it was BIZAAAR tonight - but not in good way. PS: Judgements above made purely on the summary show, =========================== Well, I take back what I said last night. You were right, Marion. I thought the task was falling into potential disrepute, but it was turned around by BB. But even so, all the people in BB know what they're in for, including Mikey. I hope Luke is not evicted. In fact I now think it is a shame those 4 are up for eviction. ========================= I can't match that, Marion! So I won't try. Absolutely brilliant. You should take over the Grace Dent spot. HIRRARIOUSLY TACKY! So cringe-worthy I actually retched. ========================= I don't think I shall ever recoover from seeing Mario and Lisa in the DR tonight. Nor from watching a Charley-mutated Alexandra arguing about chips. Darnell is a gabbler, too =========================== Yes, I like Rachel. Luke is in danger of being evicted. A tragedy if he is. The Mario/Lisa DR session was pure Horror, in all senses of nasty and clown-literary. And you convey that very well, Marion, to those who didn't see it. And judging by comments here, that's all others reading this. Yes, I'd forgotten about the cage. What's it for if it's not for such a situation? Perhaps severe crimes actually result in beheading to help deck the cage. Cheap as chips. And I sometimes dance alone. =========================== LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lesson 1, the opinion of a spiteful middleaged tattooed man with a very orange skin tone is worthl;ess. Laugh at him and move on, lassies Vintage Marion. It's worth watching BB just to appreciate Marion's comments to the full. Honestly. I'm out of my league at the moment, but I hope to be able to counter-comment more fulsomely when my verbal fitness returns. Yes, I agree, Mario to be evicted. (Only one letter short of Marion! )   =========================== There was a sort of Jungian collective 'shock treatment' consciousness that swept round the composite Housemate. One head felt pain, another head felt the lighter belonged to him because at that moment it actually did, another head complained to Godbrother who had connected the synapses in this cruel way. A centaur (at the hub of the Consciousness) had an alternating current of 'brave attempt' and 'willy-nilly carelessness' - a strobing of love and hate for the others, for the communal soul - and they will feel pain forever. Godbrother himself will feel this pain when the programme crashes as the EM Forsterian Machine Stops. One hydra in a head-scarf screams: "Remember I told you!" ========================== One head of the Hydra now lopped off... Stephanie is a victim of circumstances and I feel sorry for her. Not a strong contender but I can think of a number of others who deserve to leave before her - including smarmy Mario! Kat's a kitten! Or a bouncy castle! Don't like Rex much. Alex seems to have mellowed for a while. =============================== Stephanie's interview was natural and poignant. Mario and Lisa are indeed becoming poised... I can't set your fears at rest, Marion! They are oiled and ripe, gradually priming salacious expectations while, really, we both know that it will be the putrid culmination of the leers and slops from their DR session together. ============================== Marion Arnott wrote: You and I will make the BB journey together again this year in spite of it all. I almost feel a sort of spiritual mission. ========================== Apparently Mario can count Ant & Dec among his many fans. And he's been networking so hard over the years, he can depend on the whole population to vote for him. I can't remember him, however, coming into my local pub asking for my support. Deep method-acting drama in the toilet and elsewhere about alliances and psychological dilemmas. I can depend on myself 100%, but I can't do that with other people because I don't know what they're thinking half the time. Humanity's so frustrating - they're all so damned inscrutable. And I must therefore keep asking all those people whom I don't undersatnd what they mean by what they say to me in words that they in turn don't understand. Luke got the shock of his life when Bex enveloped him in folds of femininity! ============================ Sylvia is a crafty one. A faun with bright eyes in a Henri Rousseau jungle. ========================== Mario certainly has the potential to be a good leader of a task, with his views on teamwork etc. But he is so patronising and so eager - like Alex - to say things designed to upset or annoy the others. Homing in on their weak points. I found it singularly uninteresting tonight. The band was awful. Michael on the theramin. Kat on the kettledrums. Mario on the huge olily brass thing. Darnell seems to be quite astute. Sylvia prowling (ready to pounce) in her sylvan terrain with her wide white eyes. Alex on best behaviour still misbehaves. Lisa queens it from her dual plinth with Mario. Dale is boring. Mohammed hero-worshipping Rex. Jenny too intense. What's Rachel up to? ============================ No, I only watch the summary progs. Is BB going to call Mario to the diary room every time he looks as if he's about to have some nookie with Lisa? A good joke! And a relief for us all, I liked Luke's attitude to that awful group meeting. And the crisp task was dreadful. Syvia is both attractive and not. A strange mixture of harridan and angel. LIKE YOUR NEW AVATAR, Marion, a bit like a flutterby. =========================== Do you think that scene was set up? Or a dreadful mistake by BB? As it can be inferred as a mistake, one that should never have been made, for future confidence in the DR to be upheld, then it must have indeed been a mistake. Mohammed is quiite a complex character, as it turns out. Both Mikey and him, alike. I don't envy Mo in face of his co-religionists when he gets out! I enjoyed the nominations. All to character, Irrespective of what they are like outside the DR, the best were Sylvia, Mikey and Luke. Luke and Darnell are strong contenders. Kat, too. I agree with what you say about Dale. I'm torn between Mario and Alex as to who should go. On the whole, Alex, simply to see how far Mario continues to balloon into his own self-image. He and Lisa are aging clowns.   =============================== Despite all its faults, there is no other theatricality like BB. It is both fabricated and real. The tragic 'albino-faced' Shakesperean mock-Japanese shrew that shall never be tamed, never be shamed, acting better than any actress, behaving worse than any real people. Both Coriolanus and a Macbethian witch in one vast yet paradoxically small performance. You are right about, Bex, Marion. Vintage BB. What a lightsome contrast. They could not have created it better with a great script-writer. The best scripts often just happen. Darnell still seems like a winner to me. Sylvia says she doesn't speak English properly, but I find her word perfect. Warming to her, despite her two-facedness. I'm sort of glad Mario has been saved. He is another Shakespearean character, a mixture of Ricky Gervais in 'The Office' and Sylvester Stallone (or Jackie Stallone?), unself-conscious comic relief. =========================== I think Alex is more mad than she is bad (although I don't discount the fact that she is probably bad, too) - but if she thought threats would work, surely she would have made them before the nominations, not afterwards. If it was some style of street lingo, it reminds me of Sarah's (?) use of the 'n.....r' word in the last BB. But Alex was indeed a blight in the house, and I'm glad she's gone. Dale's karate chop wood seemed pretty brittle and almost breaking apart on its own. It was pitiful to see Alex so joyful at the successes in the Japanese tasks, with us knowing that she was about to be (justfiably) kicked out. A tragic shrew, a shriven shrew. =========================== Just a quick one - as I'm watching extra time in the Croatia/Turkey match (and I've got Turkey in the TTA sweepstake): but OMG! Did you see Mario & Lisa? And the custard cream? ========================== The scene between Mario and Lisa was most disturbing, hilarious and, well, - Abigail's Party taken to new horrific lengths??? The interview with Alexandra was predictable. She hadn'r really got a leg to stand on but she had a leg she had brought along and nothing would prize it from her grasp. I see Heat magazine are cashing in... And Turkey won! ========================== Horrithongous! That coily embrace between Abigail and Slime-pie. ========================== I've never seen someone so besotted as Sylvia is with this new Kenny Everett lookalike. Did Mario say he manages 500 people in real life...? Is this a custard cream factory and he's its Willie W*nka? Dale is a strange cove. Not really sussed him. Mikey is becoming a whiney bore. Though I, too, would want my beauty sleep, if I were in the BB house. Actually, I'm the next on reserve for going in. ========================== Mario - A ligottian puppet of Big Brother? Heaven forfend! If he is a mole or smething, then he is a very good actor at being such a bad actor acting as a slime-pie willy w*nka! My mind turns somersualts lke an electrocuted dead monkey. And that's not good this time on a Sunday morning. ============================= From Goldfrapp Forum (not TTA): Yes, Sylvia as a bunny-boiler did occur to me. The fastest into that mode often turns out to be the most virulent. A friend of mine has a theory about Mario & Lisa. There cannot possibly be a real couple like that. If there is, then one fears for all sorts of sanities. Also, it is unlikely that they are moles or puppets of BB acting the part of such slime-pies. No - what is happening here is that they (Mario or Lisa, or whatever their real names are) are making fun of BB. They feel BB has been patronising enough in the past. BB has always acted as master. So, M & L are acting a part to ridicule BB, pretending to be people they are not, acting brilliantly and increasingly as quite unbelievable specimens of humanity to see how long they can be believed as real. ===================== Sylvia suffers a fatal attraction. I suppose it can be a mistake to judge people by normal standards when they are in the abnormal circumstances of the House. Luke is the only one with his head screwed on. Interesting description of the various factions and factions within factions by room, by gender, by love interest, by ashtray... Dale a hobbit? He does have a puckish look. Sometimes a possessed look ========================= Custard creams do seem a theme of the messy montage that is Lisa and Mario. Except I fear they are harder inside than their mock soft exteriors. An agenda for fame on the back of TV entertainment as it has now becme. We can only turn, turn again for sanity and less loose frontage, for less atrocious examples of British scurf-life that is them and the mis-fired scatology of Mikey. And the smarmy smugness of Stu. The chick-lusts of Sylvia. I appreciate BB not for itself but for what it so vividly represents. A lesson for us all. Dale and Jen are a situation comedy within a tragedy, written by someone who is not very good at writing situation comedies. Luke simply a detached running commentary. Rex, simply detached. The Churlish Chef who muscles up ready for a duel with any Galloping Gourmet that comes his way. Dennis - a walking backside from an etching by Jacques Callot. Rachel is a blank slate, trying to make chalk marks for a hopscotch game her mother as a child once played in the street. Kat and Darnell are my favourites. They represent what I believe in from within, fighting (sometimes against their own natures) for good. ============================== It bears out my worst fears re the Ant & Dec show (none of which I've ever seen before). The whole thing is obviously a put-up job by all concerned (just like their phone competitions). It actually proves that Mario is a complete fabrication there - and in BB9. Unbelievable! Seriously disturbing. =============================== Mario is not real. He is a showman playing a part, as he did on the contrived Ant & Dec show, as amply displayed by the video you kindly supplied. Lisa, his partner-in-business (acting as a partner-in-love) is equally contrived. This is fabrication piled on fabrication that only the 'reality' of BB can contain. Sylvia as a noir film dame? - Brilliant. Darnell and Luke are both great blokes, but are polar opposites temperamently. Darnell may even be a polar bear. Like you, Sylvia to stay - for all the wrong reasons. ================================== CONTINUED HERE: http://weirdmonger.blogdrive.com/archive/293.html

 

You are a reality sleuth, Marion. You heard the expression here first!

Kara is a cool fomenter. A Pogrom Panjandrum.

Ziggy is clouded by a web of mixed intentions bordering not only on self-doubt and existential angst, but on reality channels that even our sleuth can't fathom. Ziggy himself, of course, is not clever enough to sing along with these Shadows.

The twins - a single flutterby? Indeed, Marion, one that gurgles nonsense poems to ward off the mosquito dreams that will one day sadly bite them.

=====================

I hope Brian took precautions when under the duvet with half of the Flutterby!

Mega-mother knows all - even more than Big Brother does.

She even knew that Jonty was blubbing quietly in the caravan out of sight.

I can't remember Adele from BB3, but I'm told she was the one who had the minging row with Jade about veruccas.

=====================

Self awareness is dead - Gerry nominated Jonty because he's a grown man who talks to teddies. Gerry said this with his monkey propped up beside him.

I noticed that. The BB experience in the long-term seems not only damaging to any self-awareness but to any self whatsoever. Gerry has been playing parts all week, particularly in that 'ball' incident with Ziggy.

==================

BB is becoming positively sadistic, regarding the HMs as toys. I don't like that. Yes, I've complained before about this hothouse psychological experiment attitude this season. I am also critical of this season's tendency to play the entertainment card too strongly in picking and choosing certain HMs to play certain roles for a laugh in certain scenarios. Also of this season's tendency for BB to take on a personality in the diary room which skews the neutrality. BB is breaking too many of its own time-tested rules just to make things more 'interesting'. This loads the dice against natural chance. Even the twins looked jaded tonight. ===================== BTW, however, I didn't worry about the rabbit-skinning as this was a regular occurrence in my parents' household pre-myxamatosis. ================== Fellini / Ligotti cheese at 8½p per wedge. ================== I don't think Amy is too pleased with being evicted. I think she probably sees Carole as the mastermind of her downfall. BB still choosing particular HMs to take certain parts in tasks rather than letting the group decide as in previous series. I think the whole thing has certainly gone off the boil. ================== All that is true, Marion. But Amy came over well in the interview, I thought. But I'm only a gullible man! Tracy did look good on the catwalk. Something out of an Elizabeth Bowen novel. ===================== Jonty and Kara seemed to be hitting it off. Tracy and Ziggy... All of them in a pile... I wonder what Mr and Mrs Flutterby think of Brian as a prospective son-in-law. Brian's BB performance seems to have been carefully planned and implemented from day one, meticulously adapting to circumstances in a very clever but blatantly cynical fashion. He will probably win. ======================= You seem to have Ziggy to a tee, Marion. I note, from another TV programme yesterday, that Wendy Richard is even stronger in her criticism of him! (Is she a relation of Cliff Richard?!) Reading back on these posts, I see I've never liked him either. I'm learning to speak Twinglish, btw. des This thread has had 14002 views to date! ====================== What a load of rubbish tonight! And Ziggy the mind Guru? Give me a break. ====================== Yes, I must have been in a bad mood last night. You've brought me down to earth, Marion! Or, rather, back into the crazy stratosphere that is BB. Unlike you, however, I remain even more convinced that Brian is playing a very clever game. Not 100% clever, it is true, as his mask of simplicity slips now again and we spot the philosopher-king beneath. But cleverness has its chinks, as all true cleverness seems to have ... to let in (as well as out) the unexpeccted glints of wisdom that always circle like fireflies the catalytic Flutterby in its natural state. =================== Playing 'girly' is a fave female tactic in a blokish environment Life is full of riches that only BB - at its best - can demonstrate or cause others to explain in a conversation such as this. Novels in real time with Jane Austen and 'Heat' magazine vying for the seat of the human 'fire'. ================== I'll be back on this one, Marion. I was just now in the pub with my wife and two grown-up children (32 and 36), posing this question. My two children (who do watch BB) were at a loss ... so far. My wife (who does not watch BB), when having Ziggy described to her, said Wickham, without knowing what you had already said. Also, aren't there two twittery sisters in Dickens somewhere who resemble the twins? Malvolio for Gerry, but Malvolio wasn't gay ....? Brian ... there must be someone for Brian. Something out of Greek Literature? But at the end of the day, 'The Tempest' is full of BB characters. Carole suffers from Clytemnestra (a female ailment) which gives her a lot of Antigone. But, as I say, I'll be back... ======================= Carole as Moby Dick? Kara as Queen Gertrude? Brian as Hamlet? Or Rupert The Bear? Liam as Postman Pat? Gerry as the narrator of 'Earthly Powers'? Jonty as Christopher Robin's teddy bear? The twins as understudies for Tinkerbelle? Ziggy as Peter Pan? ========================= Liam - Tom Sawyer Carole - Gandalf Chiggy - Antony & Cleopatra And, generally, the arguments that take place in 'Midsummer Night's Dream'. ====================== Thank thee, Marion, for keeping me anchored to unreality by describing the realities that underpin it. I cannot matcth thy incisive observations and thy own Gandalf-like overseership. Not that I'm comparing thee to Carole! Heaven forfend! This is a Shakespeare tragi-comedy cast from the streets by a random flashmob of actors who are not sure of their own characters, except Brian and the the Flutterby who dissemble and resemble respectively in their route towards fixing themselves as icons. ... while the mock-flitteries of the others spin on towards death and dissolution. =================== Actually, Tracy, although I am not fond of her, is, too, an Ozymandias on the path towards immutability, particularly during last night's programme with an unswerving look, her mouth set in unsmiling certitude. ================= Mike, I'm sure you're right about Tracy. Still stolid in a supine smugness. Right about Gerry, too. And I don't think anyone can be quite so upset by the use of the F word in the BB House! I think he stages arguments in a sado/masochistic fashion. The little playlet, however, that he conducted in the DR with a flittery and a karatid was pure delight. A play within a play within a play... Pyramus and Thisbe upon a Midsummer Night's Dream ... a preamble to the huge thunderoles of the Mighty Mobius amid the Pannish Ziggurats floating upon their empty stomachs. ================== Keep your pecker up, Marion. We're nearly there. It will be all over soon. Floating Ziggurats again last night in my dreams. ====================== Gerry is going, then. A bit of a damp squib of a guru decision. They should have made the decision together in the DR without interference by others. ============== Did I note some Amanda-angst in a pure-driven flittery last night? ================ Marion, you are the F.R. Leavis of Big Brother, dowsing for poetic motivations that others can't even be motivated to guess are undercurrents let alone cursors of life itself. Yes, I did mean what you suggest when speaking of 'Amanda-angst', i.e. not angst at all as you so clearly adumbrate. ================ In real life, I understand Carole is a political activist which may indeed be a modern version of a mother in Austenworld trying to get her daughters married satisfactorily. ================ A charming evening in teh House - almost. Arguments remain the bread and butter of the house. Amanda and Brian are both rather sweet with each other, though I don't believe he is quite so sexually naive as he makes out. Also, I don't actually think the twins are *quite* as naive as they make out! Jonty's history question to BB was a bit show-offy. And Mrs Bennett/Gandalf totters on towards dubious goals. Tracy remains Ozymandias. Or Ozymandia remains Tracy. ================= You must be an expert on Scottish history, Marion. Re Jonty, I can see you're anyone's if they've heard of the Battle of Sauchieburn! I once called Ziggy a fop. I now think he is more of a cad or bounder in the tradition of Patrick Hamilton novels. ================== Ziggy as iconic fop/cad? ... but even failing to be that, too. He would make a very boring novel. Perhaps he's just an old-fashioned con-trickster or Fifties door-to-door salesman or spiv. I, too, was struck again by Manda's comic artistry with the foghorn; whether that artistry is intentional or accidental, it's a delight. Tracy shed Ozymandias tears. Felt genuine. Brilliant BB idea, for once, to have the finishing school (at the finish part of the series). Twin-sets and pearls are due for a fashionable return, as are tea-time treats at the Lyons Corner House to the sound of Max Jaffa and his Palm Court Orchestra. Silver-stands of tiered cakes, heady infusions... Brian sounded and looked like Derek when grappling with rounded vowels. But how hard was he reallly grappling. He found it almost too easy teasing us into believing his transformation from Essex bloke to gifted man who exists beyond his means and his demeanour. (I live in Essex). Twin to win. ======================= ...or twin-set to win? Perhaps BB (unlikely though it would have appeared at the start of the series) will be seen, in hindsight, to be in the vanguard of a politer more naive society. Charley was merely the stooge. =================== Kara (Pogrom Panjandrum) seems to be annoying Ziggy. She's almost an SF-type alien. Tracy, Jonty and Kara up for grabs. Kara's performance tonight might save her. Jonty is a strange cove. Davey Rizzio died from flatulence after eating Heinz Beans. ================= I'm devastated that I got Rizzio question wrong. I thought it would be cheating to google him. You wouldn't have wanted that. I dunno, Kara reminds me of a character from Star Trek or a Cordwainer Smith fiction. I hope coveish Jonty and Ozymanic Tracy go tonight. Ziggy was acting wildly manic/suppressed last night, true. BB brings out the fictions beneath the veneer. If he didn't say so much, I'd say he was Pinteresque. Your typos, M, make me want to take you to Tea at the Ritz: and be a thread-tidy Higgins to your Eliza. ====================  fraught session tonight. Ziggy outing Carole as a scary control-freak. Jonty and Tracy upset at nominations. Even the task winning seemed muted - and almost a cheat or fabrication on BB's part to get them a luxury budget for the last week. Tracy has become a tragic figure in recent days. She needs to articulae her own soliloquy, however rudimentary it might be, to reconcile the breakdown of her own 'deal with it!' ideals. I really don't like Liam, I've decided. At least Ziggy is interesting. Amanda clutching the foghorn duing the Ziggy/Carole fracas was both hilarious and poignant, if anything is possible to be both! Brian is either a fake or a natural 'noble savage' in the Jean Jacques Rousseau sense. ===================== LOL! A gem of a post, M. I also enjoyed Jonty's performance with the foghorn imitating Ian Paisley. Carole said she was warning Sam about how things could be being viewed from outside, not stirring things. I shall leave open whether we should give her the benefit of the doubt. Brian is indeed a Rousseauian Noble Savage. He and Kara landed here from spaceships, I reckon, just to be on BB! Did not like BB's unfairly picking and choosing, for effect, who should win cigarettes. ====================== I think I was as surprised as Jonty was that he's staying! Still, I actually learned a lot about chickens and eggs tonight. The party bartering was a hoot. Is anything worth a jar of piccillili? A pharse that will go into proverbial history. ========================== Jonty is a strange cove who dad-dances with a teddy-bear, as Davina pointed out. It's a strange world. We're all probably strange in our own way. We would indeed be strange if we weren't strange. Yes, I agree, Marion, with your fears expressed above and with your view on that despicable 'ranking' task. Just grit your teeth, keep your eyes closed if necessary, but we shall see this thing through to the end. It would be decided strange, if we don't, after all these weeks. ===================== All a bit run-of-the-mill tonight. Even the twins lacked lustre. Only Jonty's gratuitous 'happening' in the loo was reasoanbly inventive. But what will be the punishment for Zigaroliam? Inundation by Mountainous Mammaries? ===================== A bit convoluted and contrived tonight. Ziggy does seem to have some self-awareness re his own uncoolness. Jonty seems genuinely caring. No further glimpse, thankfully, of his bits, also. Liam seems a bit pretentiously pedestrian sometimes. The quiz was a fabricated nonsense. ========================= And why was Sam so tearful? I could not work it out. Many girls and women often cry for no reason, I reckon. ====================== The twins take centre stage, all-tangled in Carole's web. At least they have now shown glimpses of non-flittery mooncalf-dom when under pressure. Also they were worried about gaining weight while in the BB house, which I think may be true: teetering on matronliness? Well, probably not. Felt sorry for Ziggy. He has been a cad, as many men of his age regularly are. He's just had millions watching him do it! BB again has put drawing-pins into the HM-flies and watched them struggle. Another fraught evening. I'll be glad when it's over. But I shall miss this thread. And there may never be another BB, I sense. ========================= You sound a little down, Des - can I help in any way? Shall I pen a spectacular anti-Ziggy rant for tomorrow, full of artistic and hilarious typos? Shall I have him and Carole dancing their cotillion again? Just that, you've done it already. LOL! I think Ziggy is indeed cryptic in expression (not cleverly, but CliffRichardly), as Carole says. Despite her webbiness, she is shrewd. A shrewd shrew. Sam has been proved to be the powerhouse behind the twin-set, also shrewd, but incredibly flitterier than Carole, of course! Amanda, meanwhile, has an innate type of intelligence that would make her a good accountant, contrasting with her instinctive comic sense. Jonty is the old school gentleman, harbouring spankiness (as all old school gentlemen probably do). Liam is the laddish pedant. Brian - Rousseau's Noble Savage on a mission for the common touch. Jonty's concocted task seemed well-conceived and meatily cultural, but BB doesn't do culture overtly (although it is cultural in its own way, i.e. theatricalising today's humanity and its ways) - so the laddish night out, in the last week, was the only option. ========================= Or a man inadequately playing the part of an adequate? Or adequately playing the part of an inadequate? Or someone simply playing himself? This is the enticing dilemma of BB. Not being an old school gentleman myself, I remain unsure. I give him the benefit of the doubt. I think the others like him. The biggest fake in there is Brian. I now suspect Sam of hiding her shrewdness until yesterday ... or trying to do do so ... until she was blatantly caught out making a decision for a group! Ziggy is not faking being a fake. He is a fake. Carole is a bundle of twisted motives, caring, almsot servile domestically yet a hard operator in the politics of BB. Amanda should win on her own. Liam is a side issue, beefcake-in-dripping with misfired pretensions for becoming a logical person with principles. ===================== Quite mad tonight! Last minute weepie from Carole to absolve herself from 13 weeks of shrew-ness. I've said this before - the twins variously resemble Laura Palmer from 'Twin Peaks' when in wigs. The filming was a mess but light-hearted enough. Brian seemed to make a good Charley. Brian can't even fake properly being a bad actor. The twins created a Mount Jonty with diverse bedding. Horseplay, shouts across the wall, Ziggy still out of his depth... ======================= Their BB film was surreal - we were sat at home watching them on a tv show filming themselves on a tv show to make a tv show and pretending to be one another. Indeed, and now you put it like that, I recall I wrote a story on similar lines in the seventies! des PS: Very nearly 18,000 views of this thread as I speak. ================ Liam dunking a twin's head in an ice bowl? That's a common sport in Newcastle and Gateshead, I believe. The Angel of the North, it's called. ===================== Dorian Gray is the best literary figure so far for Ziggy! Having watched every main programme since it started, I thought it might be a good wheeze not actually to watch the final tomorrow! I also think the twins will win, although I think they should be standing separately. After coming second, Brian will make it clear in hs interview that he is actually 30 and doing a PHD in International Relations. ====================== Well, I think I would have made a better Big Jonty! Plastic Grass, Bloodbath...?? Touching cinematic scene under the moon for Brian and Amanda. "What is the Universe?" is the hardest question of all. The Unanswered Question (to the sound of Charles Ives). Things wind down till the cruel world tomorrow starts ripping away the wings off flutterbies... But at least they did it Their Way. des PS: I wonder if Rizzio knew that the Heinz who make Heinz beans have 57 varieties? =================== 9.30 pm No surprises there! And Ziggy has been entrapped again, this time by a particularly stunning vision of Chanelle. Everyone playing their part to the tee; Maybe, Jonty is the person most people will really remember from this series. He is completely uninhibited yet also strangely inhibited...? ================ Slightly surprised that Brian won, but big surprise that he won by so much. A worthy winner, in many ways. The twins were nice. But Brian had some grit in his niceness. I can't help thinking, though, that this is a professionally self-trained BB contestant winning BB. Thanks in particular to Marion. See you next Summer on this thread. (I can't believe I've been watching this regularly since the end of May!) ================ Above taken from: http://www.ttapress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=182 ================ August 1968 W. H. Auden ------------------------------------- The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.

 

 

All taken from the TTA Press Message Boards (thanks TTA, and thanks Marion)

==========================================================

BIG BROTHER - CELEBRITY HIJACK (JAN 2008):

  
 Absolutely brilliantly funny! I've only watched it to the end of the Ch 4 broadcast and hoping that the rest will be recorded from E4+1 later tonight for me to watch tomorrow. So no spoilers, please!

Poor old John!

Like the look of Amy - a sort of intellectual Flutterby!
 
========================
 
Wow !
Marion. Thanks for those amazing aide memoire portraits of the contestants. I shall be constantly referring back to them over the coming weeks.

My E4+1 recording missed out the last couple of minutes but I gathered John won. I felt very sorry for him, but equally he should have done better. With this one chance in a lifetime (with the knowledge that he could confess later) he should have thrown himself into the embarrassments with more gusto. I suspect that some of the others didn't even realise that he had been acting 'silly'. We have seen far sillier people on BB FOR REAL in the past!!

A refreshing change to have talented, successful non-celebrities on BB, and such (on the initial face of it) exciting people.
========================
 
Agree with all that, Marion. A precious lot with so much charm brimming over. But charm just as much as rancour can cause a powder keg...

I've not heard one swear word yet.

I noticed that world record breaking 'sweeeeeeeeeet', too!

I think Matt Lucas is brilliant, too. Who's next?

For me, so far, the fashion designer is the most intriguing and the most powder-keggish.

Amy is her own conceptual art. Sleek, old-fashioned, fiery, dadaistic...?

The brother and sister: flighted Midwich Cuckoos from a fantasy circus...
======================
 
Still very impressed, despite one swear word from the racing driver and one silly tantrum from Jade.

The talent show was interesting but over-prepared for a BB event. The two singers were best.

I think a lot of people who automatically discard BB, would very well enjoy this new series.

I don't really like the brother / sister team. Not sure why yet.

Amy is my favourite (the intellectual Flutterby). I was quite psychic, it turns out, to call her dadaistic earlier, judging by her talent performance tnight!

BTW, I've read my old Mum's 'Sunday Mirror' today and it says that Celebrity BB Hijack is "a load of crap. So crappy, that, without kidding, I'm actually missing Davina Foghorn McCall...".
It is a very scathing review. Quite unjustified I feel.
======================
 
Well, they're all pretty likeable I find. I think there is an extra depth to Amy: which is one of a modern art abstraction masquerading as an alien pretending to be a normal human being.

Didn't like Ian Wright very much. A BB should not chat to the housemates over the tannoy so conversationally. Just not a done thing! It has altered the angles of the universe to non-Euclidean ones.
===========================
 
You've said it all, Marion. I came here ready to spill the beans on the cushions and the orgies and you'd already done it!

I think we have a STRAAAAAAAANGE one here.

Anything can happen in the next few thunderbirds.

Emilia is a strange lass, too. So's her high-pitched brother. Health and Safety concerns not just for there spinning, but for us just watching...

Jay is a loping busybody.

I like Anthony and Amy. Didn't they both look good when method acting?

John's secert handshake. He's a dark horse.

I wonder if Poirot will solve the Case of the Cushion In the Mouth?
=======================
 
On E4+1, Victor only got one nomination.

It's a bit of an alternate world.

I expect you can tell I haven't got much to say about tonight's episode.

Actually I thought Kelly was OK, quite cool, deliberate and shrewd. We do differ sometimes, Marion.
=====================
 
No joke this time about alternate worlds - but I'm pretty sure it was Anthony wearing the nappy, not Liam.

Perhaps a Heavy Metal fan reading this will be able to tell us the answer to your question i.e do people dance with nappies (as a baby?) when doing a dance (a moshe?) to this music? 
  
 ====================

I sometimes find Brand amusing and quite original, but fundamentally I don't like him. Having said that, the cameraman incident was an experiment that needed to be done with BB and he was brave enough to instigate it,. I'm not sure if it really worked well but it evoked considerations of realty/unreality, suspension of disbelief, theatricality etc that should interest all of us involved with fiction.

I didn't understand the John problem in this context. But that is good. Not understanding is often good.

Not got an answer on the nappy yet. Possibly because I was asking Americans and they've never heard of a nappy. (They call it a diaper).

des

From 'Blonde' by Joyce Carol Oates:
She was so earnest, saying, 'It's so scary, how a scene with actual people just goes on and on? Like on a bus? What's to stop it?' And, that wistful little-girl look in her face. 'D'you ever think how hard it is to figure what people mean when probably they don't mean anything? Not like a script. Or that the point of something happening is when probably there's no point, it just "happened"? Like the weather?'
 
=========================
 
It was a shame that the positive things that John Mc brought to the house as BB were tarnished by the mistake of bringing the siblings' mother into the frame-up.

I think Victor will go tomorrow as the public will want to see how Emilia the James Bond Girl blowing on the barrel of her gun gets on without him.

Anyway, Marion, please give me your 7 to 2 tick-tack sign. See if you were paying attention.
 
=====================
 
Seen a recording of the interview. Jade was a wonderful glisten-eyed cliff about to crumble into the sea - but she proudly withstood the waves and conquered all-coming hordes. She should have been the winner, not the first out!
I liked Dermot's homely red cardigan. Something from my ancient past.
 
=====================
 
I think Liam was a good lead singer of the grunge group. Manic Street Cushions.

I think there are too many odd bods invading the Housemate area. This is not like the good old days of BB. It should not be done. It's just cheap thrills.

Peaches Geldof - I wonder how she made it as a celebrity?
 
=====================
 
Opportunity Knocks for Hughie Greene's grandaughter Peaches Geldof...

It was an interesting experiment tonight (like the cameraman incident) but one difficult to condone on an entertainment show. The fact it is difficult to condone as entertainment actually made it doubly interesting in a way. A paradox.

I knew Amy would withstand any pressure with her tunnel vision; you must have tunnel vision to be an artist. Another paradox. (She looked like a pixie n her hat).

I felt sorry for Anthony.

I think Victor finds it hard to hide his true feelings under the disguise of a joke. I'm not sure if it's a cultural difference but, like you, Marion, I don't like him at all! But I also think Emilia is giving mixed messages to him in their sibling relationship... She's a bit of a minx.

Her physical antics are sometimes spider-like....
 
========================
Well, I've never lked Chris Moyles, and I like him even less now. Not sure he'll care one way or the other, though, when he reads this.

Yes, a flat session, that.

I think Anthony now thinks the nation thinks he 's a girl's blouse!

Amy overblew the crush thing. But Nathan was a bit childish. Other than Victor and possibly Jay, Nathan is my least favourite HM.

Jeremy as a snow angel. What about Health & Safety?
 
==================
Brian Sewell's BB. I've always had a soft spot for him, and he didn't let me down. Probably the most constructive edition of BB I've ever seen.

I don't necessarily go with his view on modern art, however. I think he was a bit hard on Amy Flutterby.

Nice dinner.
Nice gentle touches between the HMs tonight, coupled with some equally gentle horseplay.

Perfect.
 
======================
 
Another first for BB - a fabricated HM-instigated row (reality/unreality?) creating further (real?) rows. Can't be condoned as entertainment. But interesting psychologically, 'aesthetically'... Reprehensible, but emblematic of today's society.

The chemical mix is deadly, when you have high-fliers in that mix. Situations taken too seriously yet, paradoxically, not seriously enough. This is something only BB can do (or something like BB). Art can't do it alone. Literature is found wanting when the nub of existence and relationships is concerned.

I am surprised nobody else on these Boards (over the years by evidence of their lack of commenting on the threads) seem to take BB seriously enough to give it their serious attention - or unseriously enough to give it their unserious attention.
 
=================================
 
Another day...

What's the opposite of pants?
Just more pants.

I won't dignify tonight's show with any comment.

And who is Craig David?
 
======================================
 
I hate to admit this, but I still get mixed up with the names Callista and Latoya and who uses which!
I don't remember much about last night's shows, as I turned 60 yesterday!
 
===================================
 
Thanks, Marion, for the Birthday thoughts.

Yes, 'annoying Jay' was a flop - especially as I believe he soon realised what was going on and just played along.

I don't know if I've lost the plot since yesterday, but indeed I have lost the plot of this BB altogether. None of it seems to make sense any more.

I hope to get it back tomorrow.
 
===================================
 
Shocked by Anthony's behaviour. As we all know, 'racism' is an incredibly serious matter to broach on BB, and I'm not sure of the rights and wrongs here, but, from what I've seen, Anthony has committed a cardinal sin in bringing it up in the way he did.

I think all the heart has now gone out of this series of BB. The recent flops of hijacking haven't helped. (I will however also take from the series some earlier really interesting hijacking events, with interesting 'artistic/philosophical' repercussions).
===================================

 

CONTINUED HERE: http://weirdmonger.blogdrive.com/archive/292.html

 

DFL's on-the-hoof comments about UK 'BIG BROTHER' Summer 2007

Thanks to TTA Press (Interzone) message boards and to Marion.

==========

Who's looking forward to 'Big Brother' this summer?

Here are exceprts from the old-style TTA threads that have vanished on this subject:

http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/bb.htm

I'm afraid they are only a selected record of my own previous posts, because it did not seem right to publish other people's posts at the time. Now it's too late.

=============

Seriously, I am imposing a meaning on the antics within the BB frame:a meaning that, as well as giving meaning to the ludicrous behaviour of humanity, also gives meaning to an 'Art' perspective of this phenomenon. We can never tell; the filters are too complex. The thing, at its root, may be utter rubbish: a false mirror. Even so, that 'worry' is interesting in itself, as one explores one's own disintentioned self towards the inferred presence of many 'Proustian' selves that lurk within. At heart, I am simple-minded. Just trying to complexify things, not crucify them. A bit like reading an Elizabeth Bowen novel. Just a hobby.

==============

 

It's the old question about art and entertainment: is it a mirror or is it the cause of what appears in the mirror. I have great sympathy for some of the things you say, Foxie. I don't think you are an exception, Foxie. Most people on these threads - when they have commented on BB at all - have been rather derogatory and you have articulated their views brilliantly. A schoolteacher whom I know very well tells me BB is a bad influence on the children she teaches. They copy its behaviour, I'm told. I am more of the exception by being interested in it as a phenomenon and intellectualising it. A lot of entertainment and art is not nececssarily good for society in a measurable way, and many people claim much entertainlment (TV, Computer etc) is bad for society. As well as the 'intellectual', Tennessee-Williams-type-theatrical, Warholesque way of looking at BB, I am also interested in the people as people, and their motives, and secret signs of behaviour that give them away (much as Marion describes above). I was brought up in a very working-class / soap opera environment in the fifties and sixties. I'm not sure that's relevant. But I am brainstorming a bit in answer to your post, Foxie. I enjoy reading and writing Horror fiction, as well as literary and SF literature. Is Horror art good for society and for the demeanour of humanity? It would be a long debate of brainstorming to make a case for Horror art. But people do. Again, Foxie, I'm sure most people on these Boards would say they agree more with you, than with me, about BB. But, unlike many who watch it and who do not admit to watching it, I do watch it and admit it, too!

================

Not seen the 'guests' yet, but just watched Davina's tour of the new house. I imagine it as an SF house, in the way someone in the nineteen-fifties might envisage a house in 2007! Including the garden fridge, bedroom oven and living-room bath.

================

Hey! Must interpolate after the first set of guests: there's a lady of my age in there - interested in Dickens, too! Wow!
(And two pretty twin girls).

=============

Lesley is the 60 year old who's interested in Dickens. A pin-up for me!
All women? There's more to this than meets the eye.
I foresee trouble coming from Carol!!

===============

"It's not Lutyens, but it's home," said Lesley, as the manic sprites flittered around her.

===============

I think I dislike Shabs. Hardfaced creature

Is that her name? I know the one you mean, I'm sure. Frightening! Stuff of nightmares.
The twins are stuff of Prospero's Island.

==============

BTW, Tracey seems to see taking part on BB as being one of the 'chosen few'. There is almost a religious or spiritual tinge to her expressed view of her own position now. The stigmata of the lip ring, too, and the 'hair-shirt' view of self ... and lack of cosmetics.

==============

I'm going off Lesley. Seemed to be pretentious to bring up 'post-modern irony' at a housekeeping meeting. Sort of thing I might have done!
I wouldn't pee in the shower, though! But did she?

Beginning to like Carole more than the others.

Do NOT like Ziggy

================

You know, the flittery twins have a secret language together. That's why they don't make sense.

Am-I-bothered-Charley and Tracey are the loose cannons.

Lesley should go. Don't like her.

Carole is a dark horse, a bit unstable, going back to my original view about her.

Beginning to like Emily. Quite astute. Attractive.

Chanelle (?) is posh blandness.

Ziggy too smooth, too slick, too full of himself.

Not got a handle on Nicky, Laura yet.

The winner has yet to enter the house.

=======================

Some beauties there, Marion:

Twins: vapid
Ziggy: lounge lizard
Shabs: Eyes of a serial kller
Carole: Rearranged Rose West

====================

Ziggy is a professional operator - that's why I don't like him.
There was something very stylised (Theatre of The Absurd?) about Ziggy's dinner partiy in turn with eleven females ... with eleven courses.

There was something pathetically clownish about Nicky's performance (whether intentional or not), with her pointy hat (later dramatically discarded in the garden) and her creamy eyelids amid the darker skin.

Equally (very Alfred Jarry), Lesley's performance with an imaginary bowl of olbas oil , vic or friar's balsam. Infusing the steeped aromas of the mattress - as treatment for a cold.

====================

Well, I prefer Emily to Chanelle.
The latter's kink in her hair - more in her brain! And Genital Herpes from Carole's cold?

Carole - the 'croaky crone' - (aren't I cruel?) - she's lost the plot. And she was the one who claimed she was going to pull Lesley through!

Going back to Lesley. Hope she stays now.

The twins are more gormless than flittery these days.

Shabs' gauche remarks about 'deals' (double bluff?) in the diary room make her - with the slicing looks - the most inscrutable of the housemates.

All in all, this 'girly bollocks' (as the lounge lizard calls it) is wearing very thin.

Not a good year for BB as far as I am concerned ... so far.

====================

Although not necessarily likeable all the time, I find both Emily and Shabs the most interesting people in there in terms of perceived behaviour. Shame one of them has to go. I like both of them, now.

I hate Ziggy. (One is allowed to 'hate' within the theatrical scenario presented by BB). He is a professinoal operator with women - yet thick, too. What a pig's breakfast of a character and a face. He is typical of today's civilisation. Despicable.

Picking wings off butterflies?

==================

I may regret saying above that I liked Emily. I've just heard she's been kicked out by BB for racist behaviour

================

Thanks, Andy, both for the hot new details and the additional pointers!

Pre-Raphaelite swimmers from Waterhouse's 'Hylas' - seen to be two-dimensional when peeled from his canvas to take on a mere flittery motive force. Twin-dimensional within imaginary mirrors.

(a) Was this part of rap dance 'excitement'?
(b) Was it intentional for fame's sake?
(c) Was it genuinely part of a customary racist behaviour pattern on her part?

Whichever, she must be condemned. Channel 4 did right to remove her, especially in view of the CBB furore in the winter.

This is part of a great big debate on political correctness, eg comparing today to when I grew up in the fifties... and patterns of open and secret feelings/behaviour within our selves.

===================

Emily seemed to use the term with an 'affectionate' or a friendly master-servant patronising intention. That intention may even have been sub-conscious. Many people did once use that term in that way, even certain races about themselves. They stll do. It was once used on TV comedy.
I cannot condone it in any circumstances and I don't think anyone is trying to do so.
Inexcusable, of course. Eviction was inevitable. I suppose they had to give the opportunity for Emily to explain herself in the diary room before she knew she was to be evicted, but it should have been done about 10 am, not 3 when she was already asleep.

As to upsetting the wider public, I'm sure many things on BB upset the wider public, without the apparent need for eviction.

Lesley seemed to come into her own when given an important job to read BB's message to the group about this situation. She'll probably not leave now. She's been crowned as the most reliable housemate with powers to scold and organise.

I wonder what would happen if the twins merged by inverse symbiosis. A butterfly back to its chrysalis?

================

Pre-Raphaelite swimmers from Waterhouse's 'Hylas' - seen to be two-dimensional when peeled from his canvas to take on a mere flittery motive force. Twin-dimensional within imaginary mirrors.

==================

Interlude: Auntie Lesley should run an Infants School. She'd be very good at that. And that quote about a pineapple - was that real? We should invite her on to the poetry thread when she gets out.

Shabs was the most mature in her reaction to the Emily situation, I felt.

And the twins ... chick peas ... weight loss ...
I really do think , like many twins, they have secret signs and secreat codes, even a whole seceret language...

===================

I have to say my current favourite Housemate is Shabs. I don't know how genuine she is but if she is genuine, then she's a nice girl, full of eagerness to please - belying her slicing looks.

Quite like Gerry. Not sure about Seany. He seems to be a serial minority bandwagoner.

Still hate the Cliff Richard clone.

==================

I forgot to mention in my previous post that we shall never now know whether Lesley did pee in the shower. They've obviously been told not to ask her about it. OK we call Seany Nero here on in.

======================

A little birdie has jsut told me that the four nominators this week are Nero, Gerry and the twins. It will be interesting to see if the twins vote for the same two people without having before discussed it together.

=====================

Coconut-head sort of suits Chanelle.
When is Ziggy going to break out into a chorus of 'The Young Ones'?
I think Gerry and Nero are in love.

====================

It's the twins' "gabble" that is a new language, however. Are they immortal sprites from a Midsummer Night's Dream? They're probably quite uncouth when they're at home! A pain to their Mum. They've left their wings under the stairs folded like the devil's bedding.

====================

Concertina moods kicking off in Gabble City.

All that flitters is not told.
But the twins' reasons for their nominations (once I had translated the gabble into Pigeon-Toed English) seemed quite cogent, I have to say. They seem to have intelligence beneath the nonsensical spriteliness.

I still like Shabs the best (she has not much competition in my eyes), but I think she may well go. I hope Carole goes. I hear she is one of George Galloway's Babes.

=======================

I think the Sardines game in a slimy tin was an old-fashioned Happening from the sixties. Ludicrous. Dada.

Charley is taking a leaf out of Nicky's (of BB7) book - when waving her arm in the diary room and (referring to the new Nicky) shrieks: "Who is she?"

Tracey often gives glimpses of Pete's mannerisms...

=======================

Some flitter louts instigated a water fight in the dormitory last night...

I think we may be the only ones watching BB this year, Marion.

Corky must have abandoned us. Or doesn't know how to register on this new forum?

=================

8.40 pm - why is there a big banner in the live audience tonight saying 'GET DES OUT!"???

==================

I must say I was sorry to see the naturally honest (despite pinching loo paper) & energetic Shabs go. Her slicing looks eventually became endearing.

The 4 new blokes seem ... well, 4 new blokes. Blokey blokes. Weren't the twins excited spinning their vanes?

The person to get out next is Ziggy Bear!

=======================

I liked the juxtaposition of eye-blinks with telepathy.

=====================

They may be suitable as blank slates, pink expanses for stylopen... magic dust to powder their wings... talking backwards to an ancient Christmas when there were no dysfunctional families at all to cure...

====================

Brian's a Midwich Cuckoo... the Twins are aliens too - and Seany and Gerry exchanged faces...

Jonathan and Nicky situation seems fraught with danger.

===================

And do i hear the Othello music weaving its way round Ziggi?

Are you predicting the first murder in the BB House (as a follow up to the first gay kiss)? If so, where are they going to get the poison? From Charley's venom sac?

==================

And why did nobody nominate Ziggi?

Brian amazes me. He acts like 36 and he's only 18.

Carole was spotted by me on day one as the housemate with a scew loose. Nicky is Nicky. Charley is Charley. But Carole has a real demon inside.

===============

Again this is good evidence how life-like BB is in a theatrical way. Deeper structures can be sought - often giving new perspectves ... or not sought, giving other perspectives. The deeper perspectives are not necessarily the 'correct' ones as they simply peel back even more false intentinos and mistakes vis a vis character. What is life but a *choice* of evidence, availabe or otherwise. However, in this particular incident, I assume you were given greater insght by watching the live show.

=================

Yes, Nicky, is a "what me?" character one often meets in life.
I think all Hell will break loose if, in the next part, the housemates think one of them has already won the £100,000. A sort of vicious inverse tontine.

================

Liam: Loaded I Am? Lucky I am? Loser I am?
Probably all three.

================

Why Liam? I think 'why?' could have been asked of any choice. The most bizarre choice would have been one of the twins! An interesting turn of events, not least of which is BB's willingness (ability?) to double their prize money. Do the HMs actually realise that this money to Liam now is supposed to be the prize money expected by one of them at the end of the show? ================= This prize trick is probably the most interesting experiment in BB over the years. Mixed emotions, crossed intentions, synchronicity disrupted, new omens set in motion... Charley is slightly more humorously human than I thought... acting anger ... flaunting ... The twins seem to have come prepared to be a circus act. =================== Davina said something interesting: "Like Hollyoaks, but this is real." Not real or unreal, I say, but something in between. Strange how the men see the 18 year old twins as 'untouchable'. Surprised at Seany's eviction. Every time he said 'cool', he meant 'not cool'. ====================== Well, I certainly liked Seany better than most of the other housemates ... so what went wrong? Yes, Billi is a tic and a half! Judging by the live shots at the end of the programme, are Z and C back together so soon!? ===================== Even if I accept what you say Marion - and I do partly - Seany is still preferable to most of the other housemates he's left behind. I don't know what that says. ========================= I think Brian was pretending not to have heard of Shakespeare and Romeo & Juliet. "Oh this too too solid flesh." ==== Re Billi, I think we've got to bring out the word Machiavellian again. Ziggi is nowhere near the same league. Ziggi is a bit thick, I fear.   ====================== Yes, let's leave zig and billi till later. As to Brian, he is a Midwich Cuckoo, as I said before. He is trying for a Jade thickness-effect or he is truly thick or he is very clever (appearing to act and look much older than his years inter-socially) or he really sees reality differently than most of us (non-flushing loos in Wales and the fact of there being a playwright who wrote zillions of years ago really is 'mental'!) or reality truly is Brianified and we all see it wrongly by comparison ...or all of these things, mix and match between. There is also an interesting phenomenon in some housemates fabricating BB personalities based on previous BB personalities. BB really does evoke panoplies of inextricably mingled art (fiction, theatre) and reality (perceived), panoplies that pure art can never reach. ====================== Charley, despite all her cocksure abrasiveness, is becoming one of the most likeable characters in there. There is definitely a self-aware humorous streak. I'm still finding it difficult to differentiate the constituents of Samanda. Billi is a half-clownish swarthy scheming courtier in the palace. The problem for him is that there are no real forces for him to scheme against. Brian is playing a sort of Gollum character. ======================== Billi can't put a step wrong for me! Should he have been evicted straight off for calling Charley - what was it? - a 'dick'? Syllables can change in the hearing. Charley could win BB this year. I prefer her to many of the others. I think the punishment in itself was fitting - it was just an inadvertent spin-off that the logic of the punishment led to her non-nomination. I don't think the HMs realised that they could all have had 3 hours sleep, except for one person who would have woken them all up just before the 3 hours expired. Ziggi has come up in my estimation. The person who *will* win is Chanelle. ======================== OK, I've wrongly confused Charley's theatricalness with her wild erraticness. I now think you're right, Marion. But one must also weigh entertainment value within the context of a Reality TV show, plus consideration of her typical representativeness as a class of individual who is rife in society (for the social historian) and her intrinsic simplicity/ 'straightness' and her pathetic gabbling aberrations. I'm beginning to like Gerry. ==================== Thanks, Jonathan, for explaining what madness can be. And indeed madness travels from mind to mind at top shriek. Soon there will be silence, as the last HM leaves the place for the twins to flitter around like dreams that have forgotten how to shriek. Only, perhaps, the echo of Charley's gabble fading... Only one flat face stuck to a mirror and smothered in slop.   ==================== As mentioned above, I am inspired by Jonathan's clear-sighted vision of madness and I want to leave this thread in order to shake off my own form of this madness. In fact, I think I shall leave the whole internet. But I'll wait till the morning before making a final decision. ==================== Jon has decided to saty after all - hopefully you too? Thanks, Marion. I shall be making muted comments for a while as I have had a bereavement (long expected and a relief, but a shock nevertheless). Life needs to go on, but for a while, BB will take backstage. ================= Orginally moved by Jonathan's description of his 'madness' as a reason for going. Appropriately (for me) moved by his eventual real reason for going. ============== I hear that some of the HMs are questioning the veracity of the twins' apparent naivety. ================= All is now in the melting pot with a fake new entrant 'mole' and a boomerang eviction! ================== Carole - a sly one? You're sly, too, Marion. Slyly astute. Hadn't seen Chanelle in the role of Mrs Rochester, before. Rian breaking his cover with his 'exhibitionist' slip up. I think the whole lot may be fake, the twins included! Liked the way one of the twins kept popping up to talk about jacket potatos during an intense Ziggy/Chanelle self-torture session. Was it the same twin each time?   ====================== Brian and Charley being tender together was actually quite real and touching. The Australian Soap was quite funny - and, again, Charley's part quite endearing. Brian reminds me of Derek from a previous BB - when Brian falls accidentally into his 'posh' mode. =================== I think BB is designed to send its audience quite mad with the bluff and double-bluffs of identity. I'm begnning to think Brian is a fake and he is keeping this secret even from himself. He is such a good performer. The Kylie session was a shambles. Staged to be a shambles. I know - they are all actors! We're the ones being tested, having the wool pulled over our eyes, trying to separate the wheat of truth from the chaff of fakery in ourselves against the foil of mock theatrical realities represented by BB. An experiment in designer phenomenology. The synchronised shards of random truth and fiction. ===================== The tabula rasa twins also seem appropriate in this scenario. ===================== Flitteries attacked by friskies and feelies! Why did Amanda have to do two of those fake punishments? She was there at the end cutting grass with Ziggy and Tracy! Charley's crimewatch face? LOL! ==================== Perhaps to destabilise an already unstable person, you get a stable one? On the other hand... (I wonder if she recognised wihch twin nominated her or whether she will blame both?) ===================== Reality is created by our individual perceptions of it. But I do think the phenomenon that is BB has changed all that. We all now live in the single-unit reality created by Charley. Even those who don't watch BB are living in that reality now. There's no escape, except by posting here and staking claim to aother competing reality where we at least recognise the predicament for what it is. Ziggy is now inverse cloning... ================= I've lost the plot vis a vis Ziggy and Chanelle! Pie Jesu - judging by Brian's singing - is the Faure version? Charley's World is slowly taking over, mellowing, but then due to become pent up, thunder-warm, ready for global explosion ... What *is* Carole up to with pinching men's shoes? ===================== Charley is intolerable. I think Charley finds herself intolerable! What a cross to bear! She may soon be a rough beast slouching its way to glorious flitterfication? To the background of Faure's Requiem. And Brian's witness as a Wise Midwich King. ================= I think Charley has a sense of her own weaknesses (weaknesses that part of her sees as weaknesses and another part as strengths!), and one of those weaknesses is being in denial about those very weaknesses. Her one big strength, however, is to have become such a signifcant part of this year's BB, whether intended or not. ================== A water ballet choreographed to look chaotic - followed by a poignant stud yearning for an untouchable angel. Get Nicky out! ===================== Having overcome her Clownphobia, Charley then proceeds maturely to advise Ziggy... I think the obvious winner of BB is Brian. I don't think there can be any doubt about that. He is such a good performer. So much older than his years, one wonders if he gave in the right Birth Cerificate. The Zig/Chan relationship is so fraught one wonders if a drama (written by any playwright for the purpose of similar emotional involvement) could ever be so convincing? Could actors - given the same words to speak transcribed from what was actually said - be so convincing, too? The twins lost their cool! Well done, Carole! =================== des: The twins lost their cool! Well done, Carole! Marion: Cheers for the twins. I shared their outrage at the language Carole used to them. In real life, I would be saying something similar to what Marion said. Why has the format of BB (half real, half theatrical?) made me say what I said above? I'm ashamed. (BB aids self-realisation, self-counselling?) Like BB surrendering control (for the first time in BB history?) to a housemate (Brian) by becoming counselled to his counselling, we are living within a ricochet of perceptions and nightmarish Ziggy/Chanelle goldfish bowls, where the madman is head psychologist. Tarr and Fether? ===================== BB to win BB! After that trashing of the premises!? That awful scene typified the bankruptcy of authority, global warming, entropy, the systems of Tarr & Fether: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_System_of_Doctor_Tarr_and_Professor_Fether ======================== We share the role of BB on this thread, Marion. We look after the shades of thread inhabitants shifting from nobody to nothing between the imperceptble flitters of life. A ghostly diary room where even the chair has more to say than those who read our posts here (8300 recorded views as I write this). ===================== It was spiteful of Gerry to blow up the word spiteful even beyond its extremest possible connotation. So agreed. I'm glad Charley is showing her bookish side. She makes this thread more in keeping with this bookish Interaction site! I don't even feel sorry for Nicky. I feel like queuing up for the Harry Potter book tonight, now I'm in my own bookish mood, engendered by the thought of Charley's book. Books make people read more.   ======================= There's something very weird going on with life, the universe, everything. Fake crowds? Or mass hysteria channelled systematically by the astrological pull? Charley is a sort of hub of consciousneess in a Jungian, Tateian (Catherine) irreality. Now 8471 views of this thread. ===================== I wonder, if it were legally tested, whether it is permissible to run psychological experimenst such as the BB hothouse, even with the permission of the participants. The participants thought they were going into a game show, but - judging by the 'couch' programme that was on before the summary programme - the people are being used as pawns to exemplify psychological traits etc. And there is a certain amount of cruelty in exposing a flawed person such as Charley to conditions that increase her shortcomings, to the detriment of her overall well being, as seen in tonight's summary. Throughout this whole series, I've had a soft spot for Charley, and I hope this has come out in my posts. I don't thnk she is devious, but naturally reactive. That's not to excuse some of her statements and attitudes because everyone should be judged against the yardstick of acceptable behaviour. But we sometimes ought to give a little bit of slack to those who are genuinely less able to match up to that yardstick. But where does that end? We are then faced with a thin edge of a wedge. Zero tolerance may be the answer. BB evokes such dichotomies. ==================== Carole flaunted it! Blimey! Carole finds BB easy as she refuses to get emotionally involved with it. She is playing a game. A philosophical attitude where sometimes she loses her temper, true, but she never really loses it. She is thick-skinned. Very thick-skinned. Chanelle is a serial player-to-the-camera. ================ I note that - after the Holocaust - Carole will still be there cooking among the cockroaches (or cooking for the cockroaches?). I've suspected Brian of being a fraud from early on. A clever fraud. But not quite clever enough completely to conceal how clever his fraud really is. What's the betting on the twins being frauds, too? Or simply natural icons for a future mass revolution of niceness and flitterfication? Flitterfictions? ====================== I think Charley was more cowed than usual knowing that she is being monitored by BB. I think it 6 of one and half a dozen of the other with her and Chanelle. I don't like Chanelle at all. And I do disappove of Charley's behaviour. ================== All's well that ends well.. But what tantrums fom Chanelle! (In case my grown-up daughter is reading this I'd better not say what experience I've had with similar tantrums many years ago!). And Charley did a good imitation of these Chanelle tantrums at the end! Thought Carole was very good in 'Stairway to Heaven' - both poignant and slapstick. Thought the twins in their wigs looked like Laura Palmer from TWIN PEAKS. 9206 views ==================== Things are getting very complex in the house; everyone hates and loves each other. Tracy in her woolly hat secretly controls, by grimacing, this land of marat sade. High dudgeon overflows around a dead zone, as emotions cancel each other out. ===================== This is what I said on Day One (May 30): I foresee trouble coming from Carol!! Carole seems to be the spider at the centre of the web as you say. But Tracy is somehow the spider within that spider. I still have a soft spot for Charley (compared to most of the others) and I hope she doesn't go tomorrow, although I expect she will. ======================= Charley still had a kiss goodbye for Chanelle, She is a bitch, though! Don't like the look of the halfwayers, Jonty looks like Robert Aickman, ====================== Come on, Marion, admit that Charley was growing on you towards the end! Tsk! Tsk! are the right words for Ziggy. He's an unprincipled fop. Chanelle is a poseur, a Nicky-imitator (Nicky from the previous BB) . Vivaldi - the red priest - suits her and will eventually conjugalize her and Ziggy in the Church of Celebrity. (I think they've only pretended to conjugalize so far). Summer of the Four Seasons approaches its thunderous culmination. Carole spins her web - even to the extent of milking a pose of emotional involvement. (She used the word 'milk' in this sense upon entering the house on 30 May). ===================== Ziggy is depressed, aware of his own self-destruction. As Gerry implies, a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. But all tragedies need a clown - a Porter scene - and we have Jonty in his Noel Coward dressing-gown with his Brideshead Revisited teddy bears and his Peter Brough 'Archie Andrews' act... ======================== Having woken to a new sunny day, I can't match your fine summations of goings on last night, Marion. You took the words from my mouth - better words. This is more nightmarish than any dedicated 'Horror' art. I don't know why Horrorists bother, when BB does it so much better, theatrically and realistically, separately and both at once. The flower fairies could win after all this by simply being tabula rasas! Indeed, all too much. Especially, Shannassa. ====================== Although I think Chanelle is a mixed-up kid, what she was saying about Ziggy's treatment of her was mostly true. A very traumatic scene and one that it is difficult to justify as having been engendered by the hothouse psychological 'experiment' of BB. It does, however, lead to some interesting phenomena of human interaction in a 'performance of self-perception' as well as real emotions. ===================== I'm entirely confused by the comings and goings now and proposed. Is Shanessa going to judge which house each man goes into with a quick inspection of their jack in the box? David seems to be all-knowing. He's obviously been reading this thread as preparation for going into the house. Liam and Amy have not wasted any time. I wonder if they will estimate the time taken for the spring to be released. ===================== Shenessa and David to go! I think Amy is OK, actually. I'm beginning to like Jonty. Like to keep Tracy for old times sake, though I'm not particularly fond of her. There does not seem to be much natural justice in the different ways people have been switched around. Carole and Ziggy were pleased to see each other again. ========================= Just watched David's honking tussle with the luncheon meat. Was he actually invoking Saki's Sredni Vashtar during the course of this incredible experience? ==================== Pleased with the eviction result. David looked really gutted and will no doubt be invoking Sredni Vashtar again - this time to eat Amy's brain when she's asleep, The twins getting a bit perky? ====================== Most of tonight went over my head. Have things generally gone off the boil? Deffo. PS: Is underwear really measured by the litre these days? ===================== However, subterranean things are going on. BB is deeper even than some complex literature. I am currently deconstructing last night's summary programme, in the light of your comments, Marion. =================== Just need Shilpa Shetty to return so as to advise on the roasting of the chicken! I think we should cook all of them - a real nut roast. The Twins situation seems strange - a one-flitter wonder. But they're all probably right. Whoever is up against the Twins for eviction is dead meat. Or at least half-cooked. ======================== You are a reality sleuth, Marion. You heard the expression here first! Kara is a cool fomenter. A Pogrom Panjandrum. Ziggy is clouded by a web of mixed intentions bordering not only on self-doubt and existential angst, but on reality channels that even our sleuth can't fathom. Ziggy himself, of course, is not clever enough to sing along with these Shadows. The twins - a single flutterby? Indeed, Marion, one that gurgles nonsense poems to ward off the mosquito dreams that will one day sadly bite them. des (12699 views of this thread to date) ==================

CONTINUED HERE: http://weirdmonger.blogdrive.com/archive/291.html

Chapter 14 – Brothel

 

An unashamedly coarse chapter both in deed and word. Our heroine settles into ‘The Laughing Phallus’ whorehouse under the brilliantly delineated larger-than-life Madame Scurf.  Seeing it from Tuerqui’s relatively unshockable viewpoint makes even the lily-livered reader strangely unshockable, too, while sympathising with Tuerqui’s stoicism and sad yearnings for her daughter.

 

Some choice snippets:

 

Cart ’ores sounded so much like cart horse that I was confused for a moment.  Our mistress chose to clarify her words with the cane.  A stinging stroke made contact with my thighs, and had me scrambling on to the vehicle with some alacrity.  Giggli followed me closely, clutching her bottom

 

“There’s another town ahead,” Wiggli broke in.

She was right – just ahead was a straggle of buildings, grey in the early evening, shadowed by cloudbanks.  Although never having seen the place before, somehow I knew that this was journey’s end – and the start of my whoredom.  It seemed that we all knew it – our conversation came to an abrupt halt.  In the sudden quiet, Madame Scurf was audible again.

 

She led us out of the toilet, through another door, and we were in the groping parlour.  It was a large, dimly-lit room with a bar to our left – shadowy figures sat at tables.  Tucking the whip and cane under her arm, Madame Scurf placed fingers in the corners of her mouth and produced a piercing whistle.  The room fell silent.

 

“New ’ores,” she announced to the room.  “They’re all virgins,” she winked, “but eager t’ get stuck in.  They’re ’alf in love with y’ already.”

 

[1][1] Nothing is known of Madame Scurf’s upbringing or lineage.  The name Scurf is extraordinary, and is otherwise unknown.  It is possible that it is a corruption of Scourge – in which case she could have been descended from Susanna Scourge who was prominent in Surrey politics a century earlier.  If so, her coarse accent may well have been affected.

 

.................................................

 

Queries

 

but most of the others stuck with “yes, mistress.”

I know that is correct re the end of speech punctuation, but it looks a bit odd there. Perhaps this is preferable: but most of the others stuck with a “yes mistress”.

 

 

I don’t want to harp on old debates but the first one below seems more wrong than the others:-

All six of we slaves hurried through the red door

a couple of boys dressed similarly to we girls. 

 

 

One of the above snippets refers to Madame Scurf’s “coarse accent”.  If there is going to be a problem with some readers not becoming accustomed to the coarse elided dialogue (English rather than American-based coarseness??), the problem will perhaps come to a head in this chapter, which is full of it.  Also, Madame Scurf does not seem to be consistent varying between ‘brothel’ and ‘broffel’.

 

 

===========================================

 

Word docs of the actual chapters are freely available to readers of this blog.

 

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The links to all Chapter comments by me are here: http://weirdmonger.blogspot.com/2008/06/odalisque.html

 

 

 

 

.

 

Posted by: newdfl on 7/27/2008 7:03:34 AM , 9 comments

Submitted by Pet at 7/27/2008 4:25:17 PM

Thanks, Des. It's growing late as I write -- I'll consider your queries later, except for your last point:

"Also, Madame Scurf does not seem to be consistent varying between ‘brothel’ and ‘broffel’."

Madame Scurf's accent is apt to vary. As the footnote you quote points out, it may have been an affectation. It seems to me that there is good resaon to think that Madame Scurf was probably from a middle or upper class family. My guess is that she felt a coarse accent appropriate for a brothel keeper. Also, I suspect, she was the black sheep of her family and may have had several reasons to disguise her origins. (The adoption of her extraordinary name, surely not a genuine surname, may be one attempt to obscure her past.) Like several other important "Odalisque" characters, she remains an enigma. There is plenty for the reader to chew over in trying to make sense of her character. I feel that I know Tuerqui very well -- but do not believe that I know anything of Madame Scurf beyond what is revealed in "Odalisque". My guesses about her have no higher status than those of any careful reader.

Submitted by des at 7/27/2008 4:41:44 PM

Thanks. I accept that (for what it's worth!) :-)

I look forward to the rest of your counter-comments. Just a typo on my part; my suggested replacement above should read:
but most of the others stuck with a “yes, mistress”.

Submitted by Pet at 7/31/2008 8:09:59 AM

A look at the queries:

1. but most of the others stuck with “yes, mistress.”

The full paragraph reads:

Again she paused -- this time I varied my response with "of course, mistress" -- but most of the others stuck with “yes, mistress.”

It would seem to me a bit odd to retain the comma in "of course, mistress" while cutting that of “yes, mistress”. That is, at least, whilst retaining both as direct quotations in inverted commas. Maybe the comma of “yes, mistress” could go were this placed in italics rather than quotation marks.

2. All six of we slaves hurried through the red door

This is the same usage as the "we six" debated in the Chapter 15 comments. I'm currently minded to keep both instances of "we six" (but could be swayed by convincing argument). This is certainly different from previous instances of "we slaves".

3. a couple of boys dressed similarly to we girls.

This seems little different from the instances of "we slaves" already considered -- except that it relates to "girls", rather than "slaves". That said, the argument of being treated as subject, rather than object, is less convincing in the case of "girls" than it is with "slaves". It is clear that, in Surrey at least, girls are more highly valued than boys. Possibly, Tuerqui is here reflecting matters belonging more to her upbringing than to her current circumstances. From Chapter 28 onwards, it becomes clear that girls have a very low status in the Lundin from which she has come (and the same is probably true of the Essex of her childhood). Perhaps this needs to be read in the context of later chapters -- and maybe we could return to the issue in due course.

Submitted by des at 7/31/2008 8:29:04 AM

My query on the

...mistress."

was in you ending the sentence with a " when the speech is being used as a noun clause after 'with'.

 

But probably not worth pursuing. :-)

Submitted by Pet at 7/31/2008 8:47:22 AM

So you think italics would be better than quotation marks for the end of the paragraph?

Submitted by des at 7/31/2008 8:50:30 AM

No,

...mistress".

instead of

...mistress."

Submitted by Pet at 7/31/2008 9:20:54 AM

Oh.

Submitted by Pet at 7/31/2008 9:40:27 AM

I tried moving the "yes, mistress" full stop -- but it didn't look right. Now, I've placed "yes, mistress" in italics, rather than quotation marks. That looks better to my eye.

Submitted by des at 7/31/2008 9:45:41 AM

Good result.

Secret Wheel (7)

Hole discovered by Yellowish Haze in Wheel Safety-Net now replaced:

ROUND TOUR

 

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CIGARETTES AND DANDELIONS: http://weirdmonger.livejournal.com/2007/03/14/

 

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TWICE: http://simplon.blogspirit.com/archive/2007/03/17/twice.html

 

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I chalked a rude symbol on the blackboard. The teacher just smiled at me.  Said ancient people never knew it as rude.

continued from here: http://weirdmonger.blogdrive.com/archive/285.html

 

 

I must look nervous, thinks Jane as she shuts the door behind herself.  She's always been small - her full height is five feet one - slim-built, looking younger than her years.  She seems to inspire men to want to protect her, always older men.  From her father onwards.

 

Her father.  She rarely thinks of him now.  She was six when he died: his face is a vague blur.  The man in the old photographs is almost a stranger to her, even in the picture of him with her one-year-old self on his lap.  She remembers more vividly her mother, racked with grief, bent over and crying.  The grey shell of a woman she was in the ten years before she died.

 

After she has finished, she pulls up her underwear and straightens her skirt.  She walks back down the aisle and sits again next to Simon.  He is still asleep.  She crosses her legs, reaches out and puts her hand on his knee.  Let me protect you for a change, she thinks.  She's calmer now, but there's still the landing to come and of course the return flight.  But I've got this far.  It's not so bad.

 

She gazes out of the windows to her left.  The plane is tilting in the opposite direction, lifting up and away from the seascape.  In his seat AJC is still asleep.

*

The knock on the door again.  "Come in," Peter repeats, before realising that he's locked the door from the inside.  He stands up and opens the door.

 

Roisin stands in the corridor.  Her hair is loose to her shoulders, and she is wearing a long bottle-green-and-red-squared dressing-gown.  It's open just below her knees, and he can see the lace hem of her nightdress and below that her slim hairless legs and her feet in blue fluffy slippers.

 

"Roisin..."

 

"I couldn't sleep," she says.  "There's - just something.  I can't explain it."

 

"Come in."

 

Her words skitter from her mouth; she seems much less composed, much less poised than she is by day.  He's only seen her once before like this - that night they made love.

 

She sits on the armchair, he on his bed.

 

"Is it just because it's a strange bed?" he says.

 

She shakes her head.  "No, it's not that.  It's not the nightclub on the ground floor.  I've slept through worse than that, believe me.  I just can't sleep."

 

"What's on your mind, Roisin?  Tell me.  Is it Seamus?"

 

She shakes her head again, more vehemently.  "No. No.  I don't know how to say it."

 

Peter's heart misses a beat.  It's about me.  It must be.  He swallows, takes her hands in his.  "Just try, Roisin."

 

"Last night I had a dream.  I dreamed I was in the cemetery."  Her hands grip his; she looks down at her lap.  "And I saw a gravestone with your name on it."

 

Peter's stomach clenches.

 

"I woke up in a sweat.  There were tears in my eyes.  I realised how much I care for you.  It scared the shit out of me."

 

"Shhh," he says.  He takes her in his arms.  She seems very small, very fragile.  She slips her arms about his shoulders.

 

"Just hold me," she says.

 

He rocks her gently, as he would a young girl.  As he's done to his own daughter.  As to Helen, when something had upset her.

 

Tears track down from her eyes, down her cheek, drip onto his trousers.  "Hey, come on," he says.  "Don't cry."  There's something about women's tears that strikes deep to the heart of him, reduces him to inner trembling.  And something erotic.  He gently pats her back; she holds her clinch tighter.  He puts his hand under her chin, lifts her face, leans down to kiss her.  He moves his hand down, undoes one of her dressing-gown buttons, slips his hand inside.  He pushes the fabric of her nightdress aside, and runs his hand over her breast.  He hears her breath, sharply indrawn, in his ear.

 

Once can be excused as a lapse, he thinks.  But not twice.  Twice has to be deliberate.

 

He sits on the bed and undoes his shirt.  He watches her as she stands, undoes her dressing-gown and pulls the nightdress off over her head.

*

Statistically, dreams are most often dreamed in pairs.  Ranging from a couple entwined in bed to two individuals continents apart who may never become acquainted.  The strangest element in this already strange waltz of sleep rhythms and mutual mind adaption is that the partner leading the dance forgets the dream when waking, whilst the one twirled and led remembers it...perhaps forever.

*

Peter does not ask Roisin what she dreamed tonight, if she remembers it.  In the darkest hour of the night, he feels her warm smooth flesh slide over his own, tender and sensitised by the memory, the dream, of their lovemaking.  A faint kiss on the cheek, a soprano whisper I love you in his ear.  A sleep-bleared view of her pulling her nightdress on over her head, letting it drop to cover her nudity, doing up her dressing-gown.  Tiptoed steps, the quiet opening and shutting of the door.  The memory of her words in his ear, her sighed and gasped orgasm, his final inward thrust.

 

Guilt.  He should feel guilty.  If it was casual dalliance, just a fuck, then maybe he wouldn't.  When Helen rings him up first thing he'll be cheerful, he forgot to ring her just one of those things you know how it is had a bit too much to drink you know how business trips are.  But he knows his mood is fragile, a shell.  What he and Rois�n have done goes beyond a mere lapse, and sometime soon they may have to pay the penalty.  They have made a mistake by making love a second time; they've bound themselves together too tightly now, and he won't be able to free himself without leaving part of his flesh behind.  And if Helen and the kids found out...

 

He and Roisin breakfast together.  Next week they'll meet again in Dublin, her home town.  Perhaps if he were to arrive the night before...she'll make some excuse to her boyfriend, say a girls' night out, and she'll stay with him in his hotel room...  He nods; he knows he wants to, but he wonders what he's doing to his marriage to Helen.  Poisoning it from within.

 

Roisin is in good form at today's meeting.  Changed into a pinstripe suit, her hair gathered up at the back, her face subtly made up, she seems the model of a professional woman.  But he can't think of her now without seeing the image of her, naked, walking towards him, arms outstretched.

He wishes he could leave.  Be at rest.  No more meetings.  No more treachery.  But then what would he do, with a wife and children and a mortgage?  No, he's in a rut, no matter how comfortable it may be.  What you regret most are the risks you don't take.  A lifetime of if onlys, until you wake up one day to find it's getting dark and it's much too late.

*

In his seat AJC taps into his laptop.  The woman opposite seems nervous...has been all flight.  A phobia for flying: understandable.  He taps a key sequence and her file is presented before him.  No, it's not her time yet: there's still part of the long string left.  She's only just got married; that's her husband next to her.  What a tragedy if she died on her honeymoon.  So much potential.  Future generations sleeping inside her, silent eggs in a full ovary.  Conception on her wedding night: the traditional way.  How romantic.  AJC hasn't been totally eaten up by cynicism.

 

He looks at her name, in bold type at the top of the file: DAVIES, Jane Mary (nee Crichton).  There's something familiar about her, something he can't quite trace.  He's encountered so many men and women, they all tend to blur into each other...

 

He presses another key and wipes the display.  He calls up another file.

*

Jane is looking the wrong way when it happens.  She is distracted by Simon's muttering something in his sleep, a disruption to his quiet snoring.  So she hears a thump as something hits the floor and, as one with the crowd, turns to see what has happened.  Behind her, wakened, Simon does the same.

 

At first something clenches in her stomach - what's gone wrong something wrong with the plane am I going to die now like this?  But no, the plane is steady, nothing interrupting its serene onward journey.

 

She sees a pair of legs lying in the corridor, and Grainne O'Hara's green-beskirted backside as she bends over him.  The other stewardess helps her lift the man but he's too heavy for them; a male passenger helps out.  Jane leans out into the aisle and watches as the three of them carry the passenger (collapsed? dead?) down the aisle out of sight.  When they've gone, the passengers sit back in their seats, relax.

 

Jane sits back and closes her eyes.  Silently she reaches out and clasps hold of Simon's hand.  "What happened?" he says.

 

"Don't know," she mutters.

 

She leans out and attracts Grainne's attention as she passes.  "Excuse me...is he going to be all right?"

 

"I hope so," smiles the stewardess.  "There'll be an ambulance on the runway when we land.  About ten minutes."

 

"Fingers crossed," says Jane.

 

Grainne smiles and walks past.

 

In a seat ahead, Jane can see an attaché case, lying unattended.  Now she knows who the man is who has just collapsed: the one who used the toilet before her.  A middle-aged man, balding, overweight.  She can read the gold-embossed initials on the case: PHC.  Jane thinks to call Grainne back, but doesn't.  Someone will notice it.

 

Whoever you are, I hope to God you're all right.

 

"A heart attack.  Or a stroke," Simon is saying.

 

Jane nods.

 

"He'll be okay."  A voice behind her: male.  She turns, to see AJC sitting to her left, watching her.  "It'll act as a warning, that's all, Jane.  He needs to slow down."

 

Jane says nothing, just stares in disbelief.  How do you know?  How did you know my name?  But Simon didn't hear: he distracts her by tugging at the sleeve of her blouse.

 

"Look, there's Dublin."

 

In the wonder of the sight - the illuminated, nighttime city from the air, laid out like a gigantic jewelbox - Jane forgets everything else.

 

I've got this far.  It's not too bad.

 

The plane banks - a huge dark kite - over the sleeping city.  It is silent, as silent as most graves.

*

The man who collapsed - PHC - is let off first, carried off by two ambulance men on a stretcher.  Then the other passengers disembark, row by row.  There's a buzz of conversation, brought about by the unexpected drama in the routine flight.  Jane wants to confront AJC, ask him how he knew what she believed he knew - but she loses him in the crowd.

 

They collect their luggage and make their way out into Dublin Airport.  They change some traveller's cheques for Irish currency, have a coffee, wait for the coach to Busaras, the central bus station.

 

On their way out, a woman comes up to them.  She's about the same age as Jane, a couple of inches taller, in a sweatshirt and black leggings, with collar-length red hair and glasses.  "Excuse me?" she says - and Jane notices her accent: she's a local.  "Were you on the flight from Heathrow?"

 

"Yes we were," says Simon.

 

"Are you waiting for someone?" says Jane.

 

The woman nods, obviously glad for Jane's perceptiveness.  A woman-to-woman exchange, excluding Simon for the moment.

 

"He's probably got lost," says Jane.  "He might be wondering around the airport looking for you."

 

The woman smiles thinly, anxiety undercutting her goodwill.  "Is this your first time in Dublin?"

 

Jane nods.

 

Simon says: "We're here on our honeymoon."

The exchange over, the woman smiles.  "It's a beautiful city.  "I hope you have a great time."

 

"Thank you," says Simon.  "Jane, there's our coach."

 

"Good luck," Jane says over her shoulder to the woman as they make for the exit.

 

 

Published Substance (1994) and as part of Gary Couzens’ Second Contact And Other Stories (Elastic Press 2003)

THIS FLIGHT TONIGHT

A collaboration with Gary Couzens

 

Ten minutes before he died, Andrew James Crichton selected a drink from the bar.  A single Southern Comfort with ice.  He pushed away the remains of his in-flight meal and gazed out of the window at the deep blue of the sky.  At 30,000 feet he could look down at the clouds, thick and drawn up into ice-cream peaks, or single tufts like cotton-wool.

Five minutes before he died, he continued to sip at his drink.  He switched on his laptop.  Two minutes later, feeling distracted, he gazed up at the seatbelt sign, which was unlit.  He was lost in a reverie for a minute and a half before he returned to the laptop.

He was so engrossed, all he knew was a loud roaring in his ears, intense heat and splintering, and a sense of infinite space around him as he fell.

*

Statistically more people are killed every year on the roads than in the air, but air disasters are more newsworthy.  A car accident will normally kill at most four or five people, maybe seven or eight, but unless it's a major pileup it won't make the news.  And because it takes place on terra firma, it's more survivable.  A plane crash will eliminate more than hundred people at once, and if your vehicle disintegrates several miles up you have no chance.

*

There's a sick feeling in Jane's stomach as she sits down and fastens her seatbelt.  It's not the wine she drunk the evening before, at their wedding reception.  After they'd made love, Simon slept easily, strange bed and all, and woke up refreshed.  Jane tossed and turned all night.  It was the thought of this flight, her first since the bomb which tore apart that 747 and everyone on board.  Including her father.

 

After the take-off, after that rushing of blood to parts of the body gravity normally fails to reach, Jane gains comfort from the ordinariness of her surroundings.  A stretched-out hotel foyer.  Simon, by her side, leans back.  A man, across the aisle, tapping at his laptop.  The plane's hum of power, a throbbing which could easily be mistaken for a deep-throated central heating system.  She relaxes.  A honeymoon is not a time to allow an embolism into the mind: a memory of a father who died after surely comforting himself with similar ordinariness.

*

Statistically more people die before their predetermined mind-stop than otherwise...and so they hover onward like misbegotten memory forces - or anachronistic ghosts - blotting up further thoughts and, yes, memories.  They skim and soar in the same air through which sleek metal monsters divert them into a mixed backwash of mentalities.

*

Peter Clayton had risen that morning, not knowing he was to fly later in the day.  Business trips were often abruptly arranged by the Director in charge of his area.  Based in London, Peter often flies to Birmingham or Manchester or Glasgow or Edinburgh or Southampton.  Not for him the nervousness of the infrequent flier; nor the boredom of the long-haul traveller.  An hour to check in, an hour to fly, and he is at his destination, fuelled by plastic-wrapped food and airline coffee.  All airports are basically the same - the details and language spoken may differ - but there is no plunge into disorientating strangeness.  Later in the day he returns, sustained through the tedium of the meeting by company catering - all laid on, of course: keep the important delegates happy.

 

Today, Manchester; next week, Dublin, the location of the farthest-flung present, a pretty thirty-year-old redhead called Roisin, representing the company's Irish holdings.  A few months ago, in an overnight stop in a Glasgow hotel, in an access of loneliness he and Roisin made love.  A moment in time, nothing more: a meeting of tired bodies and bored minds.  Now and then he thinks of her: of her slim boyish figure, her small breasts and tight upward-pointing nipples, the sensation as her legs clasped his hips and he slid warmly into her.  It never happened.  The next morning they went separately to breakfast and were later debating fervently from either side of the meeting table.  It never happened: he has a wife and three children he adores.  He's forty years old, with thinning hair, a developing spare tyre and a blood-pressure problem; Roisin is ten years younger than him, unmarried but with a live-in boyfriend of two years' standing.  The hurt they'd cause if what they did became known, and the consequent misinterpretation: they'd meant no harm, it was just a gesture of friendship.  It never happened.

*

Jane watches the landscape veer away, as roads become lines and fields green and brown mosaic tiles - a flush of white as they break through the clouds. The sign ahead of her still burns its red message: FASTEN SEAT BELTS.  Her hand inches sideways and meets Simon's.  He wraps his fingers about hers.

 

She remembers the dream she had sometime during last night's fitful sleep.  She was on a plane similar to this one.  She tapped a passing stewardess on the arm.  "Excuse me...?"  The stewardess turned; instead of her face there was a skull.  Jane screamed.  She jumped past the stewardess, who reached for her, her bony fingers touching the fabric of Jane's blouse but sliding off as Jane ran up the aisle.  She reached the cockpit and tugged at the door –

 

"Excuse me, Madam, you're not allowed in there - "

 

- and finally she forced it open.  It was noisier in the cockpit, and as she half-stepped, half-stumbled in, the co-pilot turned. His face was another skull. And the pilot's face too.  As she stood there and screamed, she saw through the window the plane's nose tilt downwards until she could see no clouds no sky just the ground rushing up faster faster and faster -

She woke up choking back a scream.  Simon was there, holding her, soothing her.

 

"Are you okay?" Simon asks, bringing her back to the present.

 

The sky: an intense unbroken blue.  The clouds below: a thick clotted white.

 

"I'll get you a drink," he says.  "You're shaking like a leaf."

As he reaches past her to attract the stewardess's attention, Jane lightly closes her eyes.  Her blouse is damp under the armpits, her sweat glands defying her antiperspirant.  Face your fears.  Well, so far she has done this.  That was her first take-off.  Overcome your fears.  As if by shining a light on them they shrink, become trivial, instead of letting them lurk in darkness, your imagination doing the rest.  She feels light-headed.  It's the pressure: hold your nose and pop your eardrums.  Well, if she is to overcome her fears, what better than an hour-long flight from Heathrow to Dublin?  Short and sweet - soon be over.

*

Peter Clayton spends the hour's flight reading through the paperwork he'll need to get through before tomorrow's meeting.  He breaks for the in-flight meal - lamb chop and  creamed potatoes and green beans - and towards the end of the flight gives up reading and stares out at the darkening sky over Manchester.  He thinks of collecting his luggage after disembarking, then the bus into the city centre and the at-first-overwhelming largeness of Piccadilly Square, and then checking into the hotel.  He'll phone Helen, his wife, then there'll be the evening to kill.  Hopefully Roisin will be there; they'll share a drink for old times' sake.  Old times: the memory of that never-mentioned, half-denied infidelity.

In fact she's in the queue ahead of him, waiting to register.  The only woman there, amidst all the anonymous men in suits.  At first he doesn't recognise her, not even when she turns to face him: her hair has been cut to collar-length and she's wearing wire-rimmed full-moon glasses.  It makes her look older, more like her actual age instead of just out of her teens.  She waves to him and after she's registered walks back down the queue to where he's standing.

 

 "Hi."

 

"Hello Roisin, how are you?"

 

"I'm fine, thanks.  How was your flight?"

 

"Oh, nothing special."

 

She touches her hand to his elbow.  "You going to have dinner with me?"

"I had something to eat on the plane."

 

Head-and-shoulders shorter, she gazes up at him with something he reads as disappointment.  Atavistic gallantry gnaws at him.

 

"But I'm still hungry," he says.

 

She smiles.

 

The meal doesn't live up to expectations.  Roisin, changed into a lavender-coloured top and black leggings, eats voraciously.  Peter forces himself to finish his meal, knowing he'll have to do some exercise to burn it off.  He feels bloated as he stands up and they move to the bar.  He has a second drink although he knows he shouldn't; he feels himself become light-headed.

 

Conversation remains on the surface: how are his wife and children, how is her boyfriend Seamus (fiancé now), company gossip - the substance of many past face-to-face, phone and email conversations.  As he slides into tipsiness, he slips his arm about her shoulders.  He senses her discomfort, but she doesn't resist.  He thinks guiltily that he hasn't rung Helen, but he feels in no condition to do so.  At ten o'clock, Roisin yawns.

 

"Long day.  I need to go to bed."

 

He escorts her to her room, one floor below his.  They say goodbye.  He wants to kiss her; he's tempted to reach out and put his hand on her breast.  But he knows he shouldn't.  And he doesn't.

*

Statistically, Andrew James Crichton was one of those exceptions that prove the law of averages - by accidentally dying at the precise moment he was meant to die - which made everybody else on the plane victims of synchronicity, spear-carriers in the unique drama of self-reality.

*

Soon be over.  Jane notices that the laptop has ceased tapping.

She glances towards the man whose name she'll likely never know.  She can just discern the gold-embossed initials AJC on his samsonite briefcase, its black cuboid untidily tilted on the spare seat next to the aisle.

 

Probably an executive or maybe a politician.  He probably needs to sleep.  Such thoughts allow her to maintain equilibrium - as if altruism is an aid to safety.

 

Planes and spiders, her only known phobias, she thinks.  No spiders on planes, though - unless they get in with the food or cargo.  Do spiders have phobias?  Her wandering thoughts are akin to returning to dream, but not quite.

 

AJC, she sees, is indeed sleeping, just as she must have done when dreaming for real.

 

Simon too now is sleeping.   Sweet dreams, Simon.  Sweet dreams, AJC - whoever you are.

 

Soon be over.

*

He should have made a move.  Peter Clayton is only Peter Clayton by virtue of his impulses.  His whole career up to the age of forty has been a series of unexpected moves from company to company, each one a slight jump up the ladder.  His current job in itself comprises surprising changes of plan, with meetings galore abruptly cropping up for the firm's troubleshooter - as he describes himself.  He has sometimes spent a whole week chasing meetings without ever attending one of them.  Ever a more important meeting around the next corner.  Late cancellations.  Sudden appointments.  Chasing crises.  Chasing shadows.  Chasing...

 

Hang his blood pressure!  Cabin fever, nothing more.

 

He needs a cuddle.  Roisin now asleep just one floor below.  What a waste of resources!

 

He hears the sound of long-haul aeroplanes plying their invisible paths above the Manchester hotel.  Their droning - although a sign of humanity - enhances the night's solitude.  He thinks of Helen and the kids, nearly cries - but falls asleep before remembering why he wants to cry.

 

He dreams of a plane crashing.  He watches from a creeky terrain as it banks steeply, then seeming to splutter to a halt.  No sooner seen, it slices into some far-off trees with a splintering roar.  It is up to him to scramble across the squishy marshes to save any survivors.  He is horrified when he arrives on the scene.  The flaming trough which the nosecone of the plane has divotted is at least a highrise-block deep.  A number of passengers still trying to clamber out, despite the ferocity of the fire: they are flickering shadows, actually part of the living flame.  The plane itself seems to have disappeared altogether.  Surely it can't have taken off again, after allowing the maimed and half-dead to disembark?  The fire-pit created by the crash gradually relinquishes its imitation of a long vertical volcano, but dark perforations and fragile black sculptures of ash still float intermittently upwards from the former core.  He squints into the sky where he can just discern the wrecked aeroplane gliding with the large black birds...

 

Peter Clayton is woken by a soft tap-tap on his bedroom door, as if someone is typing out a message.  He hopes it's Roisin with her own share of impulse.

 

"Come in," he says.

*

As he fell, Andrew James Crichton thought: Is this what it's like to die?  Deep azure sky above him, sun shining bright on white clouds below.  To his satisfaction he learned that what he was always told was true: his life flashed before him.  He saw again himself at school, at university; he remembered how he lost his virginity at the age of seventeen; he met again his wife.  He saw through a mist of tears his only child Jane pulled bloodily from his wife's vagina, her first gurgling scream.

 

Then he fell into a cloud.

 

As far as he could see was greyish white.  The only direction indicator was the sun, above him.  He couldn't breathe - a burning in his lungs - as he fell.  And finally - a matter of seconds in real time - the white darkened, became red, then black, as Andrew died.

 

Minutes later his body hit the Atlantic.

 

And, somewhere else, someone drew out his life's thread, lined up the scissors, and cut.

*

Her bladder full, Jane undoes her seatbelt and stands up.  She glances down at Simon, asleep now.  His head lolls to one side, exposing his double chin.  You really must exercise more, she thinks.  She doesn't want to nag, but she sees Simon in ten years, after his sedentary job has taken its toll: puffy-faced, face mottled with broken blood-vessels, a spare tyre.

She's a little unsteady on her feet, her legs numb from sitting down.  The plane is on a tilt: the windows to her right face upwards into the sky, the sun burning out the blue; to her left, she can see through a gap in the clouds the Irish Sea, grey-green flecked with white.  She can see individual waves.

 

She walks the length of the aisle to the toilet.  It's occupied.  She stands there, stepping aside to let the stewardess pass.  The stewardess - Jane can read her namebadge: GRAINNE O'HARA, a real Irish name - smiles at her.

 

 "All right?"

 

Purse-lipped, Jane nods, smiles politely in return, and watches Grainne O'Hara's retreating back.  Professional to a fault: Jane is just one more nervous passenger.  There are probably many like her.

 

The toilet door opens and a middle-aged man, with thinning hair, overweight, comes out.  He smiles encouragingly at her as he returns to his seat.

 

CONTINUED HERE: http://weirdmonger.blogdrive.com/archive/286.html

 

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