The Last Post

And that last post seems like a pretty good place to wrap it up, even if I'm now making it a penultimate post.

One hundred and fifty pointless posts this year - it's been a banner year, so an early retirement has been well earned. Seven years and 784 something-and-nothings makes enough.

Thanks to the person in the US who stumbled across me and bizarrely, the two thousand page views from the Ukraine. OK, 2042 page views in seven years is nothing to write home about but nevertheless Дякую to you both.

I'd like to finish with a song....

But then...we all do in the end.

  

A Goal or a Gaol

Try Fry Fly

What if you started collecting something again?

Something specific, something simple and for the first time.

Something that wouldn't perhaps overtake or possess you but something fun and colourful and artistic which would force you to play and stare a little harder at a certain aspect of world - an aspect that by definition you already have some connection with.

What would that thing be?

I've always had a fascination with "promise", specifically that promise given to you by a snippet of entertainment. Notably the movie trailer… [insert booming voice] "In a time when aliens…" etc .

We used to call that promise "advertising". Nowadays it seems to be called marketing. The promotion of promise. But when that marketing becomes a product in itself, it takes on a kind of meta-interest.

I saw this week on television and advert advertising a further advert that would be coming up during the following program.. that that would indeed be a trailer for a movie that is about to come out.

A trailer for a trailer. An ad for an ad. It doesn't get much more meta than that.

The appeal of the distillation of course is in punchy conciseness. A little thimble punching well above its weight. A taste of nouvelle cuisine, but with the promise of an appetite satiated.

Hope.

Potential.

(prior to Delivery and perhaps Disappointment, but we will stop way before then).

Perhaps such a collection would also be an inexpensive hobby.

Ask anybody with a set of watercolours how expensive a hobby should be.

Collect Ferraris, and you are a spectacular tool and unlikely to know it.

The nerd-do-well develops fascinations.

The particular promotion I'm alluding to might be something like a beer mat but in fact I'm thinking of the theatre flyer. Specifically the A5 variety. (Don't you dare give me DL size. That's 1/3 A4, to the novice).

The A5 flyer has has a pleasing dimension and enough space for a graphic designer to go to town with a haunting image or boastful claim. They may speak of terror and mystery and primally connect with any schoolboy who ever walked into a theatre. They place their production at a venue that usually comes with hundreds of years of history, and they date and timestamp it as a transient moment in the ephemera of the shared human condition.

I quite like them.

Pen & paper

"There are no would-be writers. Only writers". 

Mark Gatiss

You've Been Maimed

Although the initial results claimed that nobody was actually harmed in the making of the video clips on You've Been Framed, we now know these assertions were based on short-term anecdotal studies alone. 

It has been revealed that despite the number of repeats and 'Best Ofs' transmitted TV researchers did not follow up on interim or long-term results.

An independent data trawl has produced a new meta-analysis released today with definitive results. This is the broadest survey of its type to date on the subject.

We now know that 36.4% of the people in You've Been Framed clips developed persistent complications (those that do not disappear within 6 months) or permanent injury requiring long-term medication or surgery. 

The cohort has a higher positive predictive value for attendance at Pain Clinics but a worrying 17% have criminal convictions for opiate or pregabalin abuse. 

ITV and Dr Harry Hill has refused to comment.

But I like it when they fall over.