John’s Roundup – 21/3/04

In the absence of any proper news, I suggest we go with John’s Roundup:

The Property Store of London Town. Four new items currently listed; although I’m sure one other one has disappeared since yesterday. Again, if you don’t want to miss out, don’t wait for us to tell you what’s there. They are:

• Ace Rimmer Light-Bee Device from Stoke Me A Clipper, costing £395. Interestingly, we are told that “originally the hard plastic prop was black in colour but it has been repainted in silver since the episode was filmed”. I wonder why – was it possibly used (or going to be used) in another episode, or what? I wanna know!
• Dimensional Portal Machine from Only The Good…, costing £595. This is bloody brilliant – check out the close-up photo. Yep, it’s constructed partly out of a JMC beer can – and the description informs us: “This version of the machine never got a close up and the only version seen was the melted one. Even though it was made by Kryten and is crucial to the final developments of the series, the footage which describes how it was knocked up out of various things, including an old beer can, was removed. But this may well appear on the series 8 DVD.” That is just brilliant – a great shame it never made it into the final ep, and proof if need be that imagination was still alive and well whilst producing VIII, thanks very much. And again, we’re told about more VIII DVD deleted scenes – from the sounds of it, there is rather more than for previous series.
• JMC Coconut Massage Milk Bottle from ‘Pete’ Part Two, costing £75. Apparently, “it is filled with an unidentified liquid”. CRAIG CHARLES’S SPUNK. Anyone who fancies giving birth to a lot of little Craigs should buy this and pour it up them; it’s worth a try.
• Model Miniature Section Of The SSS Esperanto from Back To Reality, costing £495. I mean, fucking hell. Anyone who doesn’t want this is a loony. Perfect for mounting in a… well, just mounting, actually.

Readers – some amusing news. You may remember that we reported on The Talking Toaster from Breville. Well, it’s been withdrawn from sale, because of “quality control issues”. You can choose your own joke here:

• John: Quality control? IT WAS CRAP, you mean?
• Ian: Would you like a cheese and ham Breville? NO, BECAUSE IT MIGHT KILL ME.

The Comet page for the product has already been deleted. Why the fuck did they delete it completely, instead of putting up a helpful message about why it was deleted? Oh.

Meanwhile, there was a short piece in The Independent last week about Danny John-Jules calling the BBC racist. But I’ve just found out that my stupid family have thrown out the edition in question, and I can’t be arsed rooting through the bin. Bollocks. If anyone has a copy, be a love and copy it in the comments.

Fansite stuff: Garbage World has updated with Red Dwarf Science Fiction References (Television) (an alternative to this; and Groovetown has a load of Altered Images stuff (personally, I find this rather more interesting, but each to his own). And yes, I’d forgotten to mention all this, until I saw Back In The Red this evening; and I’m about to nick their other bit of news as well. Ho!

Finally, some self-indulgent site stuff:

• The new design is going well. Sort of.
• For those of you who wanted to know what Trackback is (all -24 of you), try reading the following the following article: How TrackBack Works. If anyone is still confused (I don’t think it explains it that clearly to non-blog people myself), then I’ll write up a proper explanation for you LAY CUNTS. (See Back In The Red for all the pings I give it, as well.)
• Finally; the interesting bit. We’ll be requiring people to register to post comments in the near future; probably not as soon as the site relaunches, but not too long after it. The reason for this is not sinister; I don’t plan on banning huge tracts or people, nor do I want to know EVERY DETAIL ABOUT YOUR LIFE. It’s really just that the current system is very insecure; anyone can pretend to be anyone else, and that’s just Not Very Good. If Movable Type had supported comment registration before I’d have turned it on from the start; as it is, it’s only arriving in Movable Type 3.0, which is coming in the next few weeks. So, there’s a bit of advanced warning. Please – don’t hit me. (For those interested in the wider perspective, try www.typekey.com.)

Oh, and for anyone wanting to complain at quoting the worst episode of Red Dwarf ever at the beginning of this article:

RIMMER: Would it harm you to have hair like mine?
CAT: I have got hair like yours. Just not on my head.

This alone makes Emohawk great. Now fuck off.