Mr T earned his name from becoming well-known for regularly drinking Earl Grey.  From 2003-2007 he was a spokesman for Twinings. The first fool he ever pitied was his uncle, upon learning that he did not enjoy tea of any kind. In the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation the character of Captain Picard was often seen enjoying Earl Grey. This was due to the producers being huge Mr T fans, and wanting to include a nod to him in the series.

Ham comes from hamsters.

On November 28th 2005, I wrote this article.

I’m astonished. In all my years of being a tedious pundit, I’ve never, not once, seen CSI: Miami approach any level of reality. Until I read this article on BBC News.

This fact comes to you courtesy of the BBC news program for children, Newsround.

“A squirrel weighs about the same as a packet of biscuits.”

Modern computers have enabled Horatio Caine to automate many daily tasks in his job as head of Miami’s crime lab.

I have a secret for you, internet. Don’t tell anyone, right?

I’m in love with Michael Ironside.

There, I said it.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t the kind of love between a man and a woman, or even the kind of love between a man and a fine cuban cigar. No, this is the deep, throbbing respect every man should have for another man who is, quite simply, more manly than himself.

In the dictionary, beside the definition of “man”, there is a picture of Michael Ironside.

So who is this Michael Ironside? We’ll refer to him by his proper title of The Iron Man from here on in. Or, TIM for short.

TIM first came to everyone’s attention in the film “Scanners”. If you haven’t seen it, go ahead and watch it. It’s rubbish. I can thoroughly recommend it, though, because it has a young Michael Ironside. Too young, unfortunately. For, like a fine wine, TIM gets better with age.

He has played the bad guy in Total Recall, really getting into his stride as someone who plays total dickheads with relish. “See you at the paaaardy, Richtaaah.”

Today, however, I find myself in a tough situation. For many years I have been wishing that the UK Scifi channel wasn’t so awful. Its American cousin produces a bucketload of homegrown sci-fi. Much of it is crap, but we also have them to thank for the magnificent gravel-infested update of Battlestar Galactica, as well as perpetual Stargate. We also have them to thank for cancelling Farscape. I thought this was a hideous crime until I saw the season that immediately preceded the cancellation. Another win for the Scifi Channel.

I digress, as I often do because I am mentally ill. Anyway, in addition to the UK Scifi channel being to feeble to produce it’s own content, I have also been staggered that year on year people aren’t coming up with TV series’ that feature Michael Ironside. Sure, he had a guest spot on SG-1 as some angry guy on a planet. I don’t even remember his name. And much as I like Mitch Pileggi on Stargate Atlantis, there’s only one man you go and talk to if you’re looking for a bald, aged hardass, and that’s Michael Ironside.

Finally, I’m tired of science fiction press in general covering stuff that I don’t consider to be science fiction. This has spread into the mainstream, because the X Files muddied the waters and gave everyone a taste for the paranormal. And the science fiction press crawled all over the X Files. The end result is, TV people think they can make TV about paranormal crap and call it science fiction. Recently, this has been alleviated by the aforementioned Battlestar Galactica, and Stargate has been becoming more sci-fi than it used to be (not necessarily a good thing, it turns out). Aside from, that, though, we’re stuffed. Crap like “Supernatural” and “Hex” (just been cancelled) has been cropping up in recent years, nothing new, nothing to get excited about. We also have Buffy to thank for some of this, in case you hadn’t noticed.

The end result is: no TV series with Michael Ironside, no sci-fi TV series set in space, nothing worth watching on the UK Sci-fi channel (which, again, shows very little actual sci-fi).

Last week I heard about a spaceship-based show, funded in part by the UK Scifi channel, starring Michael Ironside.

I had to lie down for a bit.

I was getting excited until I read some of the outline today.

It’s called Ice Planet. It seems to be either very near future or present day, and it starts like this: Earth is told about a kickass growing alien spaceship hidden in the jungles of Sumatra, which needs to be used to fight off an alien attack. The good news is it succeeds. The bad news is, Earth gets turned into a desert anyway. Upon seeing a wormhole, our heroes decide to take their fancy new alien ship into it, in the hope it’ll take them back in time to resolve the problem. This is the equivalent of me seeing a rabbit hole and assuming it leads to the Taj Mahal last week.

On the other side of the wormhole, our brave heroes immediately crash the ship on some kind of ice planet. There, they learn of this new planet’s inhabitants, and about Earth’s role in whatever kind of war was going on. They also find an Aleph Tree. What the fuck this is, I don’t know.

The producers claim the series is “a cross between Star Wars, Star Trek and The X Files”. From that, we can probably expect terrible dialogue, people with bumpy heads and a serialised story that doesn’t make any sense. I guess they also forgot to mention “Lost”, because, you know, “mystery series with a bunch of stranded people” is basically the way to describe either of these series. I could also point out similarities with Battlestar Galactica, Space:1999 and Babylon 5, especially since these are based on actual observations of the premise, rather than a sales soundbite used to pitch to advertisers.

TIM himself please the Captain of Earth’s newly discovered alien ship, the Magellan. His name is General Jonas Trager, which is a pleasingly kickass name. I have a suspicion that nothing else about this series will kick any ass.

Except Michael.

Jack Bauer is a loose cannon. How do we know this? The writers of 24 punch us in the face with this fact every hour of 24. Which, coincidentally, is about the same rate at which Jack punches fellow CTU agents in the face, under the justification of doing his job.

Every series, Jack comes back for One Last Mission. And, every series, Jack takes orders from an asshole. No matter how well CTU is run, there is always a reason for an asshole to be directly above Jack in the chain of command. And now the president is also an asshole. So, lots of people to give Jack orders.

As per Standard Operating Procedure, when Jack is given a direct order, he must punch Curtis in the face, steal his security card and stealth his way into CTU. Regardless of the order. He might be told to escort a high-ranking official to the coffee-shop. He might be told to stop spilling crumbs from his doughnut onto his keyboard.

It doesn’t matter. As soon as Jack hears an order, all the CTU agents near him shuffle away, because they know Jack is going to punch one of them and steal their security card. If there are no other CTU agents around, Jack will go to the house of the nearest one, break in, punch them, steal their security card andstealth his way into CTU.

Occasionally, he also has to get out of CTU, usually after punching a fellow agent. Luckily, Jack is also trained to punch CTU security guards, so getting out isn’t a problem.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that Jack spends a good 75% of each 24 hours being on the run from CTU. It’s a vicious circle: Jack gets some important evidence, and feels CTU won’t trust him that it’s true. So, he punches Curtis, steals his security card and stealths his way into CTU to get Chloe to help him. In return, CTU trust him less, making Jack all the more likely to punch a CTU agent next time.

Speaking of Chloe, she has five lines.

-”Send it to my screen.”
-”I’ll send it to your screen.”
-”I’ll need to open up a socket first.”
-”I’ve opened up a socket.”
-RANDOM BITCHY REMARK.

Take these lines, intersperse them with Mike Novick talking in low tones, Buchanen looking square-jawed, Jack getting arrested by CTU five hundred times, Jack punching a CTU agent 500 times, and a weapon of mass destruction, and you have 24 hours in the life of Jack Bauer.

Here’s a sneak peek a the next series of 24:
-Having lost everyone and everything close to him, losing his nipples in a firefight, losing his memory and swearing never to return to CTU, Jack returns to work at CTU as normal, like he does every year.
-Terrorists get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction. This year it’s a giant orbital space laser, and it’s in geostationary orbit above the President.
-Someone from Jack’s past will try to screw him over. Again.
-Jack will punch another twenty thousand CTU agents, smashing his record from season one, which stood at a mere 804.
-Jack will also destroy China, just because, you know, that whole plot with China isn’t really going anywhere. In fact, it’s almost at though it never happened, so… China may as well never have happened, right?

Season 6 of 24 promises to be a corker, in the sense that it will encompass all the elements of previous seasons, but in a slightly different order.

I beat on CSI a lot, I know, mainly CSI: Miami. That’s because it’s easy.

Let me put it another way: if the CSI writers can get away with doing fuck all research, and indulge in lazy writing, then so can I. To further extend this comparison, if millions of people around the world enjoy CSI despite those failings, I too will enjoy the same success. This is watertight logic, and if you think you have found a discrepency, you haven’t. The only discrepency is in your face.

Here’s how to solve a crime in CSI land.
1) Go to the crime scene. Find three pieces of evidence: blood (some of it will be someone else’s), a huge chunk of dried skin, and a piece of soil.
2) Return to crime lab. Immediately put the soil through a battery of tests. It will have some unique properties that can only be found in one single area in all of the US.
3) Go to this area, find someone who works there. Accuse them of the crime immediately when you find that the flap of skin at the crime scene belongs to them.
4) The person will explain that they have a lot of loose skin, and some of it probably dropped off when you went round to the house to borrow a cup of sugar. This person will also point you in the direction of your next suspect.
5) Locate next suspect. Accuse suspect of the crime. Suspect will turn out to have a watertight alibi, and the blood will not be his. He will mention another person. This will be the person who committed the crime.
6) Find this person. Accuse them of the crime. This person will deny it, brimming with self-assurance. Explain that it was their blood at the crime scene. Come up with a ridiculous and convoluted explanation for how the suspect got their own blood at the crime scene.
7) The suspect will immediately confess, explaining why he comitted the crime.
 Case closed. Sunglasses.

The procedure for CSI: Miami differs in a few details from the standard CSI practice. I will outline the Miami procedure below:
1) Do not go to the crime scene. Your boss Horatio Cain is already at the crime scene. He was there within 0.04 microseconds of the crime being committed. He will collect no evidence, but will correctly notice anything and everything relevant to the crime.
2) Horatio solves crime within 0.09 microseconds of arriving on the scene. Continue waiting at the lab for Horatio to return.
3) Upon Horatio’s return, do not ask him for the solution. He will want to drip feed you information so that work appears to be done. Humour him. This is a kind act by Horatio, since it keeps everyone in the department employed. If it ever became known that he is a one-man crime-busting machine, you would be unemployed.
4) Crime is considered solved when Horatio has decided that you have done enough work to keep up the illusion of being useful.

At some point between points 3 and 4 it is considered standard operating procedure for Horatio to do any of the following:
-Molest a member of CSI staff using only his voice
-Molest a member of CSI staff using conventional molestation techniques
-Shoot someone (not necessarily a member of CSI staff)
-Remove his sunglasses and then put them back on eighteen times a second
-Stand by while other CSI staff members accuse people of the crime, hoping to get one up on Horatio by solving it without him telling them
-Drive a car through an exploding building
-Fight a tidal wave using his fists

Now you know how to solve crimes like the pros!

That’s right, after an extended break, The Facts has returned. Let’s take a rundown of some facts that may have missed your attention.

1) The Headline
That’s right, I decided to use Mark Morrison’s “Return of the Mack” as a template for my headline for this article. I can think of no good reason for this, and several bad ones: it’s a terrible, terrible piece of music; now that I’ve thought of it, it’s stuck in my head on an endless cycle; oh god make it stop.

2) Apple Macs Now Have Intel CPUs
Like a tidal wave washing over a completely uninhabited and unknown island in the middle of the Pacific, Apple announced they were switching CPU vendors. Upon hearing this news, I immediately carried on as normal. Not true, I did pause to count the buttons on my mouse, because I enjoy the fact that I can control multiple fingers at once.

3) Nun Enters Arms Trade
“A group of Irish schoolgirls and a nun have set themselves up as an international arms company to highlight the absence of weapons brokerage laws in Ireland.”BBC News

I can’t help thinking that an easier way to highlight these laws would be to quite literally highlight them in a copy of the Irish Book of Laws and send it directly tothe President, with a note saying “these laws are somewhat insubstantial”. Perhaps I just lack motivation.

More disturbing right now is that fact that an Irish nun and a group of schoolgirls possess more destructive potential than I ever will. Even more disturbing than that is the thought that these schoolgirls could level my house with a few well-aimed RPGs from their stock cupboard.

4) Global Warming Is Bullshit
Source: Me. This Winter has been damn cold.

5) XBox 360 Released
I know this happened a while ago. I told you, I’m playing catchup. So, yeah. Woo. Let’s take a look at the must-have games for the XBox 360.

Well, now we’ve got that out the way, let’s look at the hardware itself. The new XBox 360 is indeed smaller then the original XBox, by a whole seven microns in width. The CPUs are dual core processors. Each core is made of neutronium, which goes some way towards explaining the weight of the system. Microsoft’s strategy of releasing the console early in order to get a lead on Sony’s Playstation 3 may well have backfired, since Microsoft decided the best time to release the 360 was when no one was screaming out for a hardware update.

This has been borne out by the fact that games on the XBox 360 look slightly better than games on the original XBox. I could buy a lot of pies for the price of an XBox 360. We’re talking serious pie volume.

Windows is an operating system specifically designed by Microsoft to make your system crash.

Since Windows 2000 and XP, however, Microsoft changed their strategy and instead focussed on trying to make your computer run as slowly as possible.

With Windows Vista on the horizon, let’s take a look at what we can look forward to:

Enhanced DRM: For those that don’t know, Digital Rights Management is an exciting new technology aimed at making it as difficult as possible for you to enjoy your music when and where you want it.

More Multimedia: That’s right! Each version of Windows has been more MULTIMEDIA CAPABLE that the last. Where Windows 95 could only play video and sound files quite well, 98 could play them harder and more often. Windows ME was so good at being multimedia capable, that it projected video files directly into your mind. Windows XP could bend reality so that your videos actually happened in real life in front of you. The threesome scene from Wild Things is the most often played piece of video on XP machines, for this reason.

Now Windows Vista is so amazingly powerful at playing multimedia, that it will simply fire a laser out of the computer screen and kill you instantly, because there’s no point seeing any of Vista’s multimedia capabilities, since the puny human brain cannot comprehend how good the playback is.

UI improvements: The Windows XP UI was a slightly improved version of the standard Windows 95 UI. However, for Windows Vista, Microsoft want to transform the UI so that the screen is filled with useful information. Want to order pizza from a folder’s right-click menu? No problem. Want to call in an airstrike on your neighbour using MSN Messenger? Just put in his e-mail address. Want to make your computer emit the sound of a dog whistle to attract all the dogs in the neighbourhood? Just choose “Dog Whistle Alert” from the “Help” drop-down menu on Paint.

Scheduling Assistance: Always forgetting your appointments at the local brothel? Don’t worry! Windows Vista will keep track of your entire life for you! When you click “I Agree” to the End User Licence Agreement, you will be agreeing for Windows Vista to absorb your soul. It will then assess your needs and make appointments as required. If it thinks that your teeth aren’t straight, it will ring the detist for you, and request an appointment using a synthesized voice based on Michael Ironside’s gutteral tones, mixed in with 200% reverb to scare the bejesus out of the receptionist.

Incidentally, if you say “Microsoft” three times while looking into a mirror, Bill Gates will appear behind you and offer you a Beta version of Windows Vista, before clubbing you about the head with it and stealing all your silver.