Horror of Horrors (Xmas Mix)

[dotinthesky]

I wouldn't recommend listening to M.R. James' ghost stories just before going to bed. The noise in the rest of the tower block gets amplified, the faint light in the hallway intensifies. Can anyone from outside the UK listen/watch the BBC through the iPlayer? Because James' ghost stories can be found there in case you like spooking yourself.

To us, it was part of that old tradition of listening to ghost stories during Christmas because that's the only time in the year when you are guaranteed protection from the creatures of the night. On Christmas eve itself, we watched the BBC's haunted house three-part series Crooked House. (Unfortunately only the third episode is now available on the iPlayer. Maybe you can find the others if you are a good detective.) They aren't exactly great ghost stories, but they have nice classic elements in each one of them; and the final episode, The Knocker, is genuinely creepy and had me and wink_martindale freaked out at one point.

Yesterday, we walked London's deserted streets and ended up visiting the completely abandoned Olympic site, followed by Stratford. It was a bitch realising no public transport was available and we'd have to walk back home. We stopped by a corner shop on Roman Road for some junk food and I picked up a box of Cheerios without realising it had expired in August 09. Later in the evening we spotted a cockroach crawling on our kitchen counter. We are convinced it snuck out of the Cheerios box.

Granted that a human and ape are over 98% genetically identical, a human and any earthly DNA-based life form must be at least 25% identical. A human and a daffodil share common ancestry and their DNA is thus obliged to match more than 25% of the time. For the sake of argument let’s say 33%.

The point is that to say we are one-third daffodils because our DNA matches that of a daffodil 33% of the time, is not profound, it’s ridiculous. There is hardly any biological comparison you can make which will find us to be one-third daffodil, except perhaps the DNA.

Jonathan Marks, What It Really Means To Be 99% Chimpanzee

Comments

[sallypointzero.livejournal.com]

Bah grrr howl etc - the BBC iPlayer is only available on Intel macs (mine is Power mac). That is a greater reason to start saving up fr an Intel duo-core than Snow Leopard cub ever was.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Oh that sucks. May 2010 bring you many gold coins for that duo-core investment.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Snow all gone, unfortunately! I still haven't experienced a white Xmas and i was hoping this year would be the one... oh well! How are things at home?

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Crooken House was a wonderful homage to the great days of BBC horror stories - you can tell that mark Gatiss really loves this stuff. Gatiss himself was excellentn in it.

As usual, I managed to overlook the miserly budget. But I do wish they could have had a bit more cash.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

The first story definitely suffered from the low budget, but the second one was doing really well until that campy end. The third one was brill.

[petercampbell.livejournal.com]

The Christmas ghost story seems to be a bit of a lost tradition now. I'm hoping Crooked House is the start of something of a revival - I used to love watching the likes of The Signalman and Whistle and I'll Come to You on late night BBC when I was younger.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I absolutely adore ghost stories and I think the ones made here (both on TV and the radio) are world class.

[theyare45.livejournal.com]

ilenced by the poetry of the picture with those words. damn Ollie well done.

sucks about the lack of public transit, it never stops in Nyc.. Cheerios thing sucks too but is also funny.

my Christmas was quiet, i ate milk and cookies and watched Bruno. there was lots of snow on the ground in the morning but it rained all day and was gone by night.

hope you got something fun or somesuch :)

xxm+

[theyare45.livejournal.com]

*silenced.. so silenced apparently i couldnt even type the s

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Silenced S on a silent night... ;-)

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I did get a great sci-fi novel (Star Maker) plus some notebooks and pencils - I think my boyf is trying to tell me something. ;-) And I gave him this awesome BBC series, Blue Planet, about the world's oceans and rivers as well as Broadcast's latest CD (which is about witch cults in the radio age... very cool stuff.)

I imagine NYC is covered in snow now and holiday lights still flicker everywhere. Over here, I was hoping to experience Christmas for the first time with snow but, alas, it wasn't meant to be. It's still been very nice taking a break and just hanging out at home these days... I really needed (and craved) it!