Month: May 2009

Knight Rider

You’re probably thinking that Steve’s gone bonkers but please bear with me on this one.

Sci-Fi are running the new series of Knight Rider. Now we all remember the original which starred The Hoff which aired back in the early 1980s and was, along with Air Wolf one of those rather silly programs which sort of pushed the technology a bit but not to silly extremes, talking cars with computers that could do clever stunts, supersonic helicopters and so on. You get the picture.

So along comes the new series (not the 1997 spin off) and the first episode sets all the background up, or starts to and there is KITT – the talking car.

He’s come on a lot in some ways, he can do more, he’s much more intelligent and of course can tap into spy satellites and zoom in on people driving at high speed in cars and point microphones at them so they can hear what is being said. But on the down side he’s still slightly whiny and condescending and more than a touch annoying.

But KITT can do so much more than that. He can change the colour of the paint job and change the tint level of the glass. So thats sort of bordering on what we can do nowadays so that’s all right.

Wait, wait, there’s more. He can Morph.. no he doesn’t turn into a small clay person a la Aardman Animations. No he can morph into other vehicles. He can morph into a different body shape and grow large air rams and side skirts which just seem to pop out of the vehicle when no-one is looking. But better than that, he can, at speed morph into a completely different vehicle. So he changes from a muscle car into a huge big 4×4 open top truck with huge great wheels, bigger wheels than he has normally, and all at 100+mph,

Just a tad silly really, and the computer generated animation looked naff.

Having said that the stunt at the end of the first episode when a big Jeep style vehicle rammed into the side of KITT at high speed was pretty impressive.

I’m still trying to work out how the tyres were smoking when he was spinning them in a room with no oxygen in it, mind you how did they get the engine to run in the first place.

I think I need to suspend my reality checks a little more in future.

As for what followed it… Joss Whedon’s “Doll House”, that’s seriously odd

Something in the shed?

For a while now we’ve been hearing odd thumping noises at night from outside and one morning they either woke Kathy up or stopped her going back to sleep.

At first we thought it was our neighbours daughter ( who lives in their shed ) doing teenage girl things.

But the other day I was talking to my next door neighbour and she said she’d heard it too and I’ve heard much louder noises during the day.

Yesterday I was out in the garden and I heard the noises coming from the garden of one of the new houses behind us. Not only did I hear thumping noises like the ones we’d heard at night but I also hear much louder ones and what sounded like an animal moving round in hay or wood shavings. The loud thumps sounded like the noise a hoofed animal would make if it struck out with a leg and hit a wooden wall.

So the person behind us has some sort of “animal” living in their shed. But its an odd animal in that it never makes any other noise. If it was a pony or a goat or a donkey or a miniature cow then you’d hear other animal noises. If it was something like a giant vorpal bunny (i.e. The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog) which doesn’t usually make many noises then it wouldn’t sound like it was hoofed.

So maybe its a mute goat or something like that?

The more perverted and odd amongst you can probably come up with a lot more causes of odd noises coming from a shed at the bottom of someone’s garden, please do not share them here!

Eternal Salvation?

Do you seek Eternal Salvation? Do you?

I think we’re all used to Jehovah’s Witnesses turning up on our doorsteps in their sinister black suits looking like something from a Sci-Fi movie. I’ve often wondered if its worth asking if they have one of those nifty devices for wiping your memories like they do in MIB

But today the JW’s plumbed new depths for me. They were doorstepping the street and I was walking down the road with my Sainsbury’s bag grasped in my hand. I was walking with a purpose and one of them called out to me and asked me that question, then he asked it again and I found he’d actually come back down the path and was chasing me down the road.

Now I know we’re in a global recession but is it hitting the JWs?

“Brother, we have been looking at your performance figures and they are most disappointing. You need to up your catch rate by 25% or we will have to let you go”.

I ignored him and headed off and did my shopping. I dawdled in the fruit and veg section, working out that by the time I headed back they would be past my house.

But alas and alack, no they were not.

So I sneaked past them and got into my house and put the shopping into the fridge and then headed up stairs for a shower which I took my time over

Surely that would be long enough?

It would seem not, it looks like they managed to button hole a couple of the neighbours.

I’d been back downstairs about 10 minutes when the doorbell rang, so I ignored it.

Rude and impolite I know but hassling me on the street frankly is not on.

Sorry but my soul does not want saving today.