A surprising number of topics, all in one entry...

I will be in deep mourning for my beloved show 'Six Feet Under' which concluded its life last night. It was not my first or only love, but I am impressed by the fact it managed one of the best last episodes of anything ever, with its flashes forward to the weddings and deaths of most of the principal characters, its refusal ever to clarify whether the appearances of the dead were hallucinations, dreams or ghosts (or all of the above on occasion) and its teasing little hints of fragments of story not told ( Maggy is at a doctor's office - does this mean she is pregnant with another of Nate's children? Apparently Claire marries Ted years later after meeting him again at Keith's funeral - what is the story here? One of Keith and David's sons appears to have a male companion at various funerals and weddings...Rico and Vanessa clearly make their peace with the Fishers after setting up their own firm). I loved all of these people and I will miss them.

And, being stupid, I never went to look at the obituaries page on the HBO site.
http://www.hbo.com/sixfeetunder/obituary/episode61.shtml

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I did a discussion of fanfic with Sheenagh Pugh for The Verb, which will air on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday night at 9.30. And will thereafter be on their website www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/theverb

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'The Corpse Bride' is nowhere near as good as 'Nightmare Before Christmas' but is still sweet-natured and Depp-filled. The main problem is that it loses the annoying parents far too soon, and that there is not enough complication in the third act. What few songs there are are particularly splendid - I may have to find a cheap copy of the CD somewhere.

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Everyone is asking what people want to know, or what they think, happened at the end of their fics. Consider me included in this meme, gagged from katemonkey.

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Similarly, a lot of people are using Nov 2nd to memorialize their dead. This strikes me as a good idea. I am not going to state which of these are the most important or say anything particular about them, not on this occasion.

But here are the people I loved or knew or cared about or in at least one case hated that are dead, and should not be.

Pat Caldwell; Roger Baker;George Kant; Steve Francis; Philip Core; Angela Carter; Richard Evans; Big Pearl; Linda Gold; Paule Marie Angele Searle Sr; Stacey Fairfax; Kathy Acker; Ros Stott; Bonnie Falconer; William Jordan; Lorna Sage; Andrew Smart; Liz Young; Andy Popper; Margaret Jordan; Meg Kaveney; Joseph Hugo Kaveney; Judith Beale; Selena Ulrich

They are all missed.

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I have been including reviews and other bits of published journalism. Is this pure ego, or would people like this to continue? I have a profile of George RR Martin (with one egregious error in it) and a review of a book on Anthony Burgess in the current Time Out. I will post them here if someone asks me to...

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And as for Blunkett, gloating is almost a duty. This is a man who wanted to raise the age of heterosexual consent rather than liberalize the law on gay sex, who tried to introduce regulations that would have thrown a lot of trans people out of their jobs and careers, who was always one of the vilest of Blair's toadies. If, having sold out on youthful idealism, he was not very good at being a class traitor, and made a serious mess of his personal life and of his grovelling in the trough of advantage, this is not a source of sympathy, as far as I am concerned.

Yes, he made an impressive career in spite of crippling poverty and disability in youth. The question though is, did he learn from this to respect other people's struggles? And the answer is, he did not. Much of what is worst about the New Labour Government passed across his desk sooner or later. And he was far too fond of thinking something a good idea simply because it would be denounced by people like me.

He managed that difficult project, being a more horrid Home Secretary than Michael Howard.

And he is not dead, just disgraced. That's just, well, peachy.