Headlining Fleet Street: Call me Florence Nightingale (no, really, call me. Please?)

Day two of the News-based Internship!.

Firstly, I'm convinced Idris Elba was driving our Tube today. When he apologised over the intercom for the delay, “due to a train… on the section ahead”, I fully expected him to start berating someone called Alice.

Secondly, I should probably learn first aid or something. When a girl fainted on me on the train

It's rude to point. Don't point your finger at me, don't know where it's been.

Before going any further, read this. That way what I'm about to say will make sense.

DISCLAIMER- I will acknowledge/ allow that in light of certain other huge changes Facebook wheeled out over yesterday and today (depending on when Zuckerberg changed yours) the removal of one button pales into ridiculousness. Still, there you are.

As I was saying, I was shown this the other day, because I clicked on a link to it after a Twitter-user retweeted someone's re-tweet of a link to a blog. Confused? Such are the gateway times we live in, internet user. Anyway, it got me thinking about the elusive, mysterious "Poke".

Graphic Novel Review- Wolverine: Old Man Logan

That's right, after last week's Wolverine: Origin we're here at the end, Wolverine: Old Man Logan, written by Mark Millar with art by Steve McNiven. You can catch that review here, bub.

Story-wise, it actually manages to do something original with the idea of an old man coming out of retirement for one last job

News-based Internship! Breaking the business, take two

So, I've landed an internship at a news wire. It's in London, Fleet Street to be precise, and it's a bit like a deja vu where you know the last time you did it wasn't as good as this one, inexplicably. I felt much less like a fraud standing on the underground platform a year on, maybe because I've matured, maybe because of my slick new haircut. Maybe because it's a bit more of a serious stab at getting into the business. That said, I still felt a bit of a fraud, looking around at all the worn down commuters in suits and faces pinstriped with age, only much less of one.

"There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, 'tis for some other."- Da Vinci

It turns out that the future of space exploration may not be as dead in the water as previously indicated.

Coming Soon- "Promised Manned Mission to Mars, Or how a giant rocket will make everyone forget about the Moon missions and the current lack of any space program".

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/biggest-ever-rocket-man-mars-160357782.html

After the interval- "One Year Until First Commercial Space Flight, Or Branson reckons billionaires will be whizzing about quicker than holidaymakers fleeing mansions on fire".
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/virgin-aims-first-space-launch-within-044339875.html

All jokes aside, why not have a sort of privateer space race? I'd like to see more independent companies beginning space programs. Imagine the development Honda could do, for Christ's sake! Privatised space travel would force government agencies such as NASA to compete. A sort of space race for peace time. I wouldn't go so far as to say that focussing on space travel will bring world peace, but some experts have said as much. I'd say that while the technology powerhouses and scientists are focussed on the great "out there", at least they won't be concentrating on new ways to blow people up.

If anything, it would give us a little bit more of a hold on this stay our species has booked at the Hotel Universe- as Robert Heinlein said, "The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in." And if nothing else, it would encourage other designs and shapes of craft to be drawn up and, hopefully, take over from the spindly-winged Branson-Batwing. I still reckon it looks stupid.

Graphic Novel Review- Wolverine: Origin

A quick defence of the genre and medium, before we begin. Sometimes (quite commonly) people sniff at graphic novels and turn their noses up.

If done properly it’s the ultimate visual medium. Even silent films had sound effects and hurdy-gurdy music played live on location. With a graphic novel every detail of the story, including the characters present, the plot developments, the mood of the moment, all of them have to be recognisably drawn into the panel or written into the dialogue. At least 60% of the story is told by the artwork.

So seeing as I have a small amount of money injected into my account every fortnight and the freedom with which to set my own reading agenda instead of having Woolf inflicted upon me I am reigniting my passion for graphic novels. I will be reviewing one a week, with the reviews being posted every Wednesday to try to give the blog a more permanent structure. I hope that for the people reading this measly drop in the ocean of personal blogs on the planet Internet it is interesting and perhaps a little enlightening, and maybe convinces you to have a go at broadening your own reading outside of the medium of purely written storytelling and into something a little more diverse.

Now, I don’t have anywhere near enough money to get as many graphic novels as I’d like or even enough to accurately represent even a tenth of the entire genre, so I’ll be buying things according to my taste rather than trying to cover the “greats”. Sometimes the two will inevitably overlap, but this feature will be more or less a rogues’ gallery of things I thought worth a pop.

And so we begin with Wolverine: Origin, written by Bill Jemas, Joe Quesada and Paul Jenkins, and pencilled by Andy Kubert and coloured by Richard Isanove.

"Are you sure you buried Heather all in one place?" ITV Drama Review- Appropriate Adult

ITV and Channel 4 turn out some great drama based on things that have really happened, the extremes of the human condition. Compared to the stories BBC occasionally create that glimmer among the diatribe of soaps and "continuing drama" like Waterloo Road, they tend to be about true crime or disturbingly written dramas such as Red Riding, pushing what can be done and told on TV.

More than a few echoes of Longford, in which Jim Broadbent shone, as he always does. Perhaps it was the continuous prison visitations or just the sense of someone who should know better being drawn into the web of lies and seduction woven by a serial killer as Longford experienced with Myra Hindley and Leach found with Fred West, or the nature of the crimes, but they mirrored well. Standing up in comparison to Longford, Appropriate Adult unfortunately fell a little short.

A home from home that's too big, a bit too hot and sticky- the old, budget hotel of planets, then.

News just in this afternoon- there is an exoplanet that has been discover which is probably habitable, though not very easily. It would be like living in a sauna, apparently, and while that'd be great for your complexion for a while it would eventually be terrible for any buildings/ semi-permanent settlements. For shame.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't at least look at it, though, in case we need to leave within the fairly small interstellar window of the next 250 years. As many scientists and sci-fi authors have said, the future of the human race is not on one planet, and probably not this one. So, onwards! To the catchily named HD85512B!

"Kids, sometimes a TV show can be a bit different"- How I Met Your Mother, the series so far

I recently had the opportunity spare time, solitude and, despite my best efforts, nights of insomnia after days spent monotonously applying for job after job after job with which to indulge in a little catching up on recent television. I caught a couple of episodes of a series called How I Met Your Mother, and despite not getting into it before I decided to begin at the beginning after a couple of series four episodes tickled my funnybones.

I have since seen all six series, and found them incredibly refreshing among the relentless Everyone Loves Raymonds, Accidentally On Purposes and Just Shoot Mes of American situation comedy. Which has been timed brilliantly, as series 7 is being aired from the 19th of September (next Monday) on CBS in the States*, so what better moment to post a rundown of the things that make the show a little bit different and give it such quality?

My family went to Italy...

And all they brought me back was this lousy... Oh, wait. It's actually pretty nice.

Valuev searching for long lost brother

Yes, folks and folkettes, this rare dip into commenting on the sporting world concerns the recent news that Nikolai Valuev is going to lead an expedition to find that rarest of cryptids, the "Russian Yeti".

Possible sighting of the Kazzbuss yeti.

He's going to Siberia for two days to hunt the beast

Lifting the gay blood-giving ban- "a step in the right direction", but not there yet

This news woke me at seven this morning. In my dozing, bleary state I acknowledged it with a smile and remember thinking that it was pretty monumental, given that yesterday there was no mention that such a decision was being made and that it was the fourth or fifth item on the bulletin. For almost thirty years any man who is gay and sexually active has been banned from donating blood, and finally the realisation has dawned on the health care professionals constantly pleading for more donors to step forward that "the ban could no longer be justified", according to the BBC.

I read up on the story on the BBC website, and have so say that while it makes an excellent soundbyte, the fact that "the life-long ban on gay men donating blood has been lifted" doesn't really address or cover the story. There's much more to it, and it's not necessarily as huge a leap forward as is perhaps being made out by "snippet news." It's worth reading the BBC story before reading any further here- it can be found at:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14824310

Done that? Read on-

We don't have the technology, we can't rebuild... your face

Listen up marketing and advertising gurus of the TV world. There's a gigantic bone I'm going to pick, with all of you, right now. So pay attention.

We do not have nanobots at the beck and call of every cosmetics company. So seriously, stop telling me that every cream, facepack, deoderant,shampoo and toothpaste is full of patented technology, illustrated by an animation in which cells or spheres move autonomously across the skin/ teeth/ hair. It doesn't happen, and won't happen within our lifetimes.

Bobbies getting beats if thinktank has its way

We don't live in an era where that's safe any more. Of course we don't. If coppers were to leave the house in full regalia and get the train, most people wouldn't bat an eyelid. But there will be the few, the few who see that one of their neighbours or a local man is leaving his house as a policeman, the few who see a lone copper on the train and taunt him as he's not on duty. The elderly and other neighbours would, perhaps, treat them with the respect that matches the respect villagers in Dock Green treated the proverbial Dixon, but only if they knew them.

"I don't do violence and guns." BBC Drama Review- Page Eight

Now this is more like it. BBC drama that actually entertains, breaks a few boundaries and doesn't sit in a nice little familiar niche. Yup, Page Eight was brilliant.

Intelligence officer Johnny Worricker, and possibly sinister neighbour Nancy Pierpan

In a nutshell- Old school espionage, relying on information and intelligence rather than clues garnered from the top secret computer, the password to which was guessed by looking at the penthouse address or super-villain's favourite book. Less adventure-based than current fare and yet more tensely put together.

Creepy, predictable and ultimately over too soon

There are two things that immediately bring that triumvirate of descriptions to mind: nighttime fumblings with Piers Morgan and the latest episode of Doctor Who, "Night Terrors" by Mark Gatiss. One of them is going to be reviewed, discussed and rated here as I've experienced it. But which?