Atticus

Glad to see you've made it over here, ID88.

Oi! Yer on shaky ground there Mr Taffy. I'll not hear a word said against the greatest manager that Scottish football has ever seen. Regardless of dodgy penalty decisions. I mean what did you want him to do? Run onto the pitch and tell the ref that he didn't want the penalty?

Still, I'll be cheering on you sheep shaggers on Saturday, hopefully big bad John Hartson can take the pish out of Ledley King et al.

Oh, very good Carmody.

Offer to show us a picture of your arse, and then cover it up with a cardigan. You tease!

Anyway, hope your doing well and that everything's fine pregnancy wise - you must be, what, about 11 months now?

Scotland is on Sky 1, Hugh, so all you have to do is find a Celtic pub.

If you wish, I can ask one of my mates where he'll be watching it (he's in Merton).

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Can't really go to the pub to watch it on Sat unfortuantely Ade, I've got to go to one of Jenny's friends' birthday party in the evening (so have to be decent behaviour ie not pished)

But the assertion that Oswald was a good shot is false.  One lone nut theorist used the fact that Oswald had achieved "Marksman" status in the Marine Corp to show that he was good with a rifle.  That's a manipulative misstatement of the truth, because Marksman is the lowest level of rifle competence that the Marine Corp accepts in its troops

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This could go on for days, but the documentary that I saw, along with Mark and a few others, showed Oswald's actual score card from his shooting range that showed marks of, something like, 58 / 60 and 59 / 60 on a number of occassions, at twice the range of Dallas. An expert stated that these were very high marks. The expert you refer to says that his marks were at best average.

Now we could both go on about this guy says he was a crap shot, and this guy says he was a great shot, but unless we invent a time machine and go back & see his score for ourselves, someone will always be able to dig up contradictory evidence or statements for either argument. I believe the scores on the scorecard, but that's my choice - for all I know the whole documentary could've been totally fictional with actors instead of experts. And the world is still flat because I haven't sailed round it myself.

And the assertion about the shots and the timing Mark is referring to was again mentioned in the documetary. Various sources claim that Oswald could not have made 3 shots in the 6 point whatever seconds between the first and third shots. The timing on the Zapruder film, showing the reactions to the first and third shots, times at more than 8 seconds. 3 shots in 8 seconds is easily acheivable.

Nah, only 50 including those two.

I only ever remember that because of the The The song "51st State". Oh, and "The New Satesmen" in Crisis, with the UK as the 51st.

Back in the days before I had a vido-recorder, there was a sketch show called "Little Armadilloes" that I liked.

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It's a vid-AY-o!

Incidentally, "My mother said, 'Happy Birthday, Siadwell. I've bought you a carpet, and you can keep it in the living room.' "

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Cheers, Ade. I just snorted my coffee out laughing while reading that one.

It's "sport". We're not the 53rd State just yet, old boy.

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Have I missed a couple??

Anyway, there is also the matter of Scotland vs Norway, those giants of international football.

But it's not on TV down here, and only on radio 5's digital channel. Bugger.

Another marvellous day of fighting spirit as we bravely go down 2-0 to the Norwegians. :(

I knew he was in a coma, but didn't know he'd died. He was a funny funny guy.

RIP Rodney.

When I'm with my elder brother and one of us farts, we still say "Hey - did somebody step on a duck?"

I thought about picking it up, much for the same reasons as Tom, but don't really want to be buying another ongoing title at the mo.

I did get that Nightcrawler Icons mini series a wee while back and I enjoyed that though. Again, a slightly dark tone to the book, human trafficking, prostitution, and Kurt's own wrestling with his faith.

Is he still doing that whole "priest" thing? Or has he knocked that on the head?

Just saw your photo, Pooka

Nice Magenta Devine-esque shades.

The bit that always sticks in my mind is the recurring line:

"it's not a VI-do, it's a Vid-AY-o"

Bwah-ha-ha-hahaha

Does anyone else remeber a sketch show from, oh, at least 10 years ago, called "Absolutely"? It was on Channel 4, and it was mainly Scottish comedians, a bit like Naked Video but turned up to 11.

It had the absolutely superb "Stoneybridge Town Council", "Mr Don & Mr George", and a timid, unlucky-in-love, welsh guy " 'ello, Shadwell here" (pardon the probably incorrect spelling of Shadwell) as some of the recurring sketches.

They also had an unlucky old bloke who kept managing to maim himself in some bizarre way, usually finishing with the words "oh bugger", and this was way before the Fast Show's "Unlucky Alf"

Classic, John. That second pic could be a Sean Phillips image.

Still no final phase of Zenith *sigh*

Oh aye, Mr Cash is there. Along with Maul, Void, Zealot, Spartan, and that fella with the big spiky metal fingers (Warblade?). Oh, and Jackson King looks more and more like Captain Ben Sisko from DS9 as the books go on.

Speaking of accents, even southerners get confused with other southerners.

When 2 very good friends of mine, one from Plymouth & one from Farnham (with that annoying habit of putting an upward inflection at the end of her sentences? So that everything she said sounded like a question?) met for the first time at uni, their conversation went something like this:

Plymouth: So where are you from then?

Fanrnham: Surrey (with implied "?")

Plymouth: I asked where you were from?

Farnham: Surrey(?)

repeat ad finitum........

.....and the Demon Constantine is from Paul Jenkins' run (the one I haven't read, frustratingly, as it looks like it's never going to be collected anywhere, ever). 

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Mark, which Jenkins' arc(s) are you looking for?

I'd be quite happy to lend them to you since you're currently living in London, as long as I get them back before you go off to wherever you're going to after you've sucked all the marrow of life from The Big Smoke.

I had a British prof in school for Women's Studies who told us she learned a new accent when she went to school to hide her working-class roots.

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I think that may have been true in the past Charlie, but it doesn't really happen that way now - folk are nowadays quite proud of their working class roots and/or regional accent.

However, I've found that as I moved further south, I had to speak more slowly and clearly, dropping a lot of words and phrases that folk just wouldn't understand, purely to make myself understood. Folk still say I've a very broad Scottish accent, but when I go back home I'm aware of how "posh" I sound. But then again, my mum & dad never let us grow up using "glaswegian-isms" that others used (stane, hame instead of stone, home, Glesga instead of Glasgow etc)

A wee bit off-topic here, but just wanted to pop into this thread to give respect to electricinca for starting a thread with a Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy song title.

Excellent work dude, raise the double standard!

Hey Charlie, was that MY Guinness? It sure looks like it to me.

Slick, Minx, Luis, - anyone else not made it back yet?

(God, this sounds like dialogue from a bad disaster movie)

Assuming for the moment that what you have written about the movie JFK is correct, what does refuting a fictional film have to do with the facts of the JFK assassination?

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I think the point Mark is trying to make is that Oliver Stone presented us with a peice of entertainment that deliberately mixed archive footage with reconstruction and a healthy dose of artistic licence in such a way that one was indistinguishable from the other.

The fact that the majority of folk who watch this film have no inkling just how far off base it was is a testimony to his skills as a filmmaker, but people will tend to believe what is presented to them in a movie based on history (such as this), regardless of whether or not it has any truth. The number of people who, likewise, slag off "Braveheart" when they realise it's not an accurate depiction of William Wallace's life is astounding. No-one said it was, but the vast majority of folk, in the absence of any genuine knowledge, will believe what's served up to them.

But I think Mark watched the same Horizon documentary as me and it was compelling. Using factual pieces of evidence, such as the Zapruder film and TV film of the motorcade, rather than "eye-witness" accounts (which are notoriusly unreliable) a 3-D computer model of the motorcade and surrounding area was created to provide an undistputable view of events from any angle.

This proved that the "magic bullet" theory holds no water based on the actual positions of the senator & the President. The track of the bullet can be easily seen to go through Kennedy's back and throat, and passing through the senator in front (who was sitting lower down and to the left of the president), out through his chest into his wrist. This shot can be extrapolated to the window of the book depository. Oswald army records were produced to show that, contrary to the claims made by Jim Garrison (and by extension, the JFK film), Oswald was an expert shot at twice the range of Dallas.

The timing of the shots (the alleged 6 point whatever seconds) is shown as more like 8 seconds in the Zapruder film (and 3 shots in 8 seconds is, by comparison, easilt achieved), and the final shot, with it's "back and to the left indicating a shot from the front and the right" was debunked by a number of ballistics experts: with such a high powered rifle the reaction of the target is no indicator of the direction of the bullet, while the small entry wound at the back with the front of the head blown away is entirely consistent with a shot from behind.

The additional shot, calimed to have been proven by expert witnesses in the senate comission on assasinations, was disproved with modern acoustic techniques, and the experts who testified in the 70s refused to comment.

However, none of what was revealed gave any conclusive proof about whether or not there were any people behind Oswald, and I don't think this will ever be proven one way or the other.

i REALLY hope we get to see that Peter Sellers thing here... and you say that Rush plays several other characters as well? What an homage!

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Rush plays Sellers playing his own father, mother, first wife, & Kubrick, and stepping out of the scene onto the film set, voicing various thoughts (though not sure if these were the thoughts of the actual people, or what Sellers believed these people thought of hiim. I think it was the latter).

Stormwatch / WildCATS cross over in the final volume, Final Orbit (vol 5), Keeyah. Oh, along with some face-sucking acid-dripping ugly mofos.