WTF

The Sopranos – It’s Not Just Me Then…

| Richard

Despite appearances to the contrary, I’m not one for watching a lot of TV – I tend to latch onto certain series and watch them until they run out of fresh ideas (24 and Lost, for instance) or until they’re snapped up by satellite TV (24 and Lost, for instance).

The Sopranos was a series that I followed from a very early stage despite Channel 4’s dubious scheduling decisions early on (and indeed splitting the final season in two). The show’s finale was shown last night on E4, so if you don’t have satellite or Freeview, you should look away now as here be spoilers.

This is how the official Sopranos web site portrays the final scene:

“Tony is the first to arrive at Holsten’s for a family dinner. He sits in a booth and plays a song on the jukebox, watching the door. Carmela enters and joins him, asking about his meeting with Mink. He tells her Carlo’s gonna testify and she takes the news with a sigh. AJ arrives next, complaining about the more mundane tasks of his job but quotes old advice from his father: “Try to remember the times that were good.” Meanwhile, Meadow struggles to parallel park outside. Customers come and go – a shady looking guy who’s been sitting at the counter enters the restroom. Finally parking the car, Meadow runs inside to join her family, just in time for dinner.”

What actually happens is that just as Meadow is about to go in the screen goes black – I thought there was a technical fault with the network or my TV and that I’d missed something as a result but no, the end credits came up.

I was expecting that “shady looking guy” to emerge from the toilet with a gun and shoot Tony in an homage to The Godfather or for the family to die in a hail of bullets after the couple of black guys who’d also entered and wandered over held up the diner.

Either of those would have been a satisfactory ending. But no, this was worse than Dallas’ “and then I woke up” homework essay ending.

I see that the Wikipedia entry for the Sopranos currently states that:

“Immediately following the airing of the final episode, the HBO web site crashed from an excess of visitors. Media reports speculated that the surge consisted of viewers disappointed by the finale. [49]“

It’s worth following that superscript link as it takes you to reports of the apparent outrage at the lack of “visual closure”.

Too right. Lazy writing at its worst and a terrible way to end a wonderful drama series.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

| Richard

…or “who will guard the guardians?”

So it appears that the head of the National Audit Office – which is there to “[scrutinise] public spending on behalf of Parliament” – is able to authorise his own expenses. In carrying out his role (apparently), Sir John Bourn has over the past six months spent £16,998 of taxpayers’ money on mainly first class travel for himself and his wife. And she does what, precisely?

Sir John and Lady Bourn took first class foreign trips to San Francisco, Venice, Lisbon, Brazil, South Africa, the Bahamas and Budapest. One trip to Brazil cost £15,997. So why – exactly – is the watchdog for public spending in the UK travelling first class to these destinations and more to the point why is his wife accompanying him?

Still the Public Accounts Commission investigated and cleared him of any wrongdoing. Well they would, wouldn’t they, given that our MPs claimed £87.6M in expenses themselves last year…

Stupid Domain Names

| Richard

I’m sorry but I could never do business with a company based upon a stupid domain name. Online insurance brokers like elephant.co.uk or confused.com. I mean to say, what have those domains got to do with insurance?

Or moonpig.com which – obviously! – is a site for personalised cards. What else would it be?

Might as well call these sites fecktard.com or something like that.

Japanese Wave Pool

| Richard

Now I don’t know about you, but I like a bit of space to myself which is why I’d probably cope badly living in a more densely populated area and in particular somewhere like Tokyo.

So as you can imagine I’m not looking forward to travelling this weekend as it’s a Bank Holiday, but at least it’s nowhere as hatstand as Tokyo:

“It’s summertime here in Tokyo, and since we’re in the middle of the Obon holiday week a lot of Tokyoites have left town for the countryside, leaving a strangely empty city behind. Those who stick around or come in from the countryside pack just about every tourist spot to the gills. We went to the Tokyo Summerland today to catch some sun, and could barely move!

From here.

This is what he’s talking about:

More e-mail Entertainment

| Richard

Or “Dear Lazyweb…” 

Someone from a large firm of property professionals visited one of my web sites today and filled in the feedback form under our contact details:

“I am working on behalf of … at … in Aberdeen. I was wondering if you could send confirmation of your contact details, such as your e-mail address. Thank you.”

“Hmm,” I wondered, “what can this be about?”

So I asked:

“Can we ask for what purpose?”

Now you’ll have already spotted the slight flaw in my plan, given I e-mailed them back (and included telephone details in the signature).

Nevertheless, a reply came my way:

“Hi Richard,

… was attempting to contact Nikki through this e-mail address
Nikki.{Lastname}@{afirmofarchitects}.co.uk but the e-mail bounced back. I am not sure what it was regarding but I can find out for you tomorrow as I believe he has been in meetings all day.

Thanks for your help…”

Who?

Anyway, I had a spare five minutes:

“Hi Emma,

Well I suppose contacting people at random from the Internet is one way of trying to get someone’s contact details.

I have no idea who Nikki might be but amazingly enough through skilful use of Google and the search string “Nikki {Lastname}” (cunningly gleaned from the bouncing e-mail address you had, and coupled with the possibility that she might be an architect from that address, I was able to find http://www.{adifferentarchitects}.co.uk/ and the e-mail address nikki.{lastname}@{adifferentarchitects}.co.uk

Stand in awe of my mastery of the Internet!

All the best,

Richard”