Star Crossed

April's episode was all about the Sun. In other words, there's not much going on in astronomy at the moment. For some reason, Scotland has her own Astronomer Royal, Prof. John Brown. He was in the study talking about the Sun, as were other boffins, discussing the armada of spacecraft currently watching the Sun from various vantage points. The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed a continuity blip when, during the interview, Sir Patrick's socks changed colour; most perplexing... Lintott The Annointed One was nowhere to be seen, Pete Lawrence was in the garden showing off his hydrogen-specific refractor lens, with his annoying sidekick Moshe Abel obsequiously fawning beside him. Speech a little slurred at times, but that's nothing new, partly a feature of his famously rapid speech pattern which has remained constant for 50 years; complexion as pink as it's been for a while, spirit untarnished and wit sharp, Sir Patrick looks in rude health. I shouldn't be surprised to see him chewing on an echidna's penis after parachuting into the Aussie jungle anytime soon.

What - is there a suicide pact or something? Maybe some kind soul out there with pancreatic cancer could write death_master_bob's biography.

Roy Scheider on the trail of a killer Sea Lion, in... Paws. The Titantic has a head-on collision with an iceberg, resulting in... Apocalypse Bow. Incorrect use of grammar by... Them Usual Suspects etc. etc. all my own work. Another 3 minutes of my life successfully wasted.

I haven't read past the second page of this thread, but... it strikes me that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the puns you've come up with have been gleaned from/are available in list form from other websites? I know this is the Ex-C forum, but FFS have we sunk so low in content that we've resorted, almost en masse*, to this sort of cheap plagiarism? *My apologies to those who may have been tarred inadvertently by my brush, but the rest of you... come on, we can do better than this. What's next? Sudoku corner? "Fix up", as the kids would say. Yours, Dismayed of Hopkinshire

Cheeseburger or pussy? Or both: a burger containing both cat and cheese. Or one made of beef and cheese made from cat's milk. I've never eaten cat, so I don't know if it's any good. A friend of mine (now dead) claimed he ate one in 1945 (when under Nazi occupation the food supply in Holland was almost non-existent) and reported that it was quite chewy and tasted rather like hare. regards, Hein Hein enters the fray as dead-cert winner of a 2010 Monkey for 'Most Ironic Post'. MH, I take my hat off to that one. If he'd said it tasted like haddock, I'd have soiled myself laughing. Or, indeed, if his friend had died from eating pussy.

Hitch-hiking can be hazardous to your health, something Dennis Hopper knows only too well.

What are the likely returns on that sort of investment and how would one compare the services of brokers in it? comparetheupsetcausedtovictimsfamiliesbyyoustayingaroundandlivingsolongaftertheyweremurdered.com

During the closing credits of tonight's 'Newsnight' on BBC2, they showed a clip of Harry Carpenter talking about the job of a sports commentator. Specifically, he urged newcomers to the trade only to give the viewer/listener insight which they may not have themselves, and not to feel embarrassed for getting paid to be silent at times when the viewer can plainly see/hear what is going on. The current crop of British sports commentators, especially Jonathan Legard, the fool who does the F1 commentary for BBC (not Brundle, he knows what he's talking about mostly) should take a leaf out of 'arry's book and STFU when we can see for ourselves what is happening. Let's call this form of verbal diarrhoea "comment-whoring", for argument's sake. Jonathan Legard, you are a comment-whore and I'd like to see your obit linked in this thread asap. Harry, RIP.

Well, let me see... I don't know much about politics, but I'm sure the best man will win on the day.

Isn't that exactly the sort of euphemism that landed them in this mess in the first place?

Those people are responsible for all those unimaginative glass boils defacing our cities. It's good they're dead, but unfortunately their legacy lives. regards, Hein Hmmm... It's a shame there's not some sort of organisation whom one could contact, in order to plan and carry out the unscheduled demolition of skyscrapers...

I reckon Maggie Thatcher's probably envious of Mr & Mrs Gaddafi.

A trippy intro to March 2010's episode, 'Life'... a stone, a lemon, Sir Patrick's cat! Even if you only watch one minute of this tiresome episode, make it the first minute, I implore you. This ep deals with the biggest, oldest chestnuts of human thought... what is life? why is it? are we alone? First up, Dr. Lewis Dartnell, an "Exobiologist"; scientific shorthand for "Lucky Funding Sponge". He's into "extremophiles", and describes his job as "hunting for aliens". Good for you, Lewis. Next! Pete Lawrence and his young friend Paul Abel are now in the garden describing, with the help of some wacky special effects, how fast light goes, and what this means for astronomy. A total waste of 5 minutes of the show. Next! Oh, Christ on a bike! Fucking SETI . This is the first time I've been tempted to switch off TSAN. It's not that I don't like SETI, it's just that I'm so bored of hearing about it. I once had a SETI screensaver but it drained CPU-time so had to go. I'm so sick of SETI. The only good thing about this segment is footage from 1965 of Dr. Frank Drake, initiator of the SETI programme, talking to Sir Patrick on TSAN. Lucky Lintott gets to talk face-to-face with Frank, still giving the same interview after 45 years. He explains the Drake Equation. Next, a few classic snippets from episodes of yesteryear, followed by a clusterhump of sycophancy courtesy of Pete 'n' Paul coming in from the cold to discuss flying saucer design and close encounters of the banal kind. Wtf? Next! Cosmologist Prof. Paul Davies, giving us the "the probability is not zero, but it may be infinitessimally small" routine, before detailing more mindblowing scenarios along the lines of Panspermia. Finally, someone talking sense. Thanks Paul, but what of my hopes of being abducted by sexy female aliens? No? Ok. Next! Sir Patrick: "One is all we want" Chris Lintott: "Just one." One other planet with life on it, that is, to let us know the answer to that burning question; are we alone in the universe?

Spend it on a world map, like I just did. Always wanted one of these, and I've just ordered one. It's huge, about 6ft x 3ft, but it'll enable me to exercise my fantasies of global domination penchant for mapping the world's renewable energy industry in a nice visual way.

If one had the funds, surely one would pay to have all of one's friends preserved too, so you'll have someone to talk to in 300 years when reanimated. Someone who can remember the days before the Great Sunstorm and the rise of the nanobreed... Which brings me to my point; surely, by the time cryogenics really becomes a viable option it will have been eclipsed by other technologies? Nanotechnology, for example, is already much further advanced; it will enable us to build humans from scratch, with better memories, more durable bodies, permanently-sweet breath, smaller shell-like ears etc. I imagine by the time Walt Disney's head is being set to defrost in some laboratory canteen microwave, the people operating the microwave will be nanobrick-built superbeings, humankind having transcended the bio-technology schism. We'll all wear silver lycra catsuits to show off our ever-perfect physiques, have huge eyes to watch permanently-streaming internet porn on our ever-increasingly huge televisions, 13 fingers on each hand to make typing posts quicker and enlarged sinuses to cope with the barometric changes as we fly up and down to the Pleasurebases® on Moon in our personal jet-hover-cars. I agree with Gunjaman5k; this is a lesson in gullibility, desperation, hope being the best of all things, whatever you wish to call it. An act of futility. Still, us humans do futile things all the time. It's just that most of our personal follies don't cost £28k and they don't get publicised.

Immortal scoff-law of entropy, titan of television Sir Patrick Moore bestows upon us the February 2010 episode. A genuine tear-jerker for fans of all things space exploration. Will 'Spirit', the known universe's pluckiest little rover, survive for yet more adventures on Mars? Find out by watching The Spirit Of Mars on BBC iplayer. Stunning images from Mars, interesting geology and real boffinthusiasm, but it's worth a watch if only for the curious prominence of a photo of Sir Patrick's cat on his desk; once I started noticing it, it became a real distraction. The photo shows the cat looking quite murderous, with startling green eyes. Quote of the episode goes to Chris Lintott; "The rovers are, essentially, robot geologists". So, just geologists, then.

Maggie's pulse-rate must be taking a hike every time she watches the news at the moment. If the latest Arg-ument over alleged oil exploration by UK companies around Las Malvinas escalates into a kerfuffle, she might actually start believing she's died and gone to heaven (hell, actually Maggie) and pop her clogs for us. In a further possible twist, pure conjecture on my part, is there some way that Scratcher could be involved in this? He does have connections to Ely Calil, notorious oil thief. Perhaps he's in cahoots with Calil to engineer not only huge profits from the oil but also, killing two knackered old birds with one stone, so to speak, to give his mum a heart attack? I wonder if he stands to inherit anything from mum's death?

I humbly apologize for my use of the ubiquitous lol, Hopkins' scourge. GP's post did make me actually laugh out loud, though. G-Force. lol indeed! I didn't bother reading the link, though.

I voted for Thatcher, not for reasons of frailty per se, more out of a desire for practicality. I'll be attending a wedding on the south coast in April; if Maggie were to [insert death analogy of your choice here] in the next month or so, I'd be able to piss on her grave on the way down there, saving an equivalent journey at a later date. Thus doing my bit to reduce my carbon footprint, a concept anathema to the evil, hollow witch. But maybe it will be Sharon. Let's keep the optimism flowing in 2010!

Kudos for keeping the Manson Family's story alive here, H; I know it's a pet subject of yours. I Youtubed the name Gary Hinman, the "musician" one of the two whose murders in which Bruce was involved. Here's a link to a selection of classic youtube fringe material on the subject (no music, just weirdos)... Gary Hinman @ Youtube

Hmm. I want to ask why you ended up on a polygraph and, specifically what you lied about, but I'd never know whether your answers are truthful. Bugger. 'Tis a quandry, no? Yes. I mean No. No. Yes?

Imagine that scene every day. Welcome to Britain.

This update from Yahoo News (always such a reliable source...*coughs*) states that Rue McClanahan's recovery from a stroke following heart surgery mentioned above isn't going necessarily well as there are still complications of the physical and speech side of things. ... One to watch? Probably God's judgment on Earth for the brazen harlot. Her fame and wealth, begat largely from the promotion of promiscuity among those in their golden years, has come back to bite her in the well-used behind. As we all know, He abhors a slut and His divine will be done. If you believe in that sort of thing. Amen.