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My ongoing education — 10 Comments

  1. Hi GD
    My greatest irritations are to do with wasted power.In American films when somebody arrives at their home if they’ve been away for hours or even days every light in the house is on .The second is related in that all suburban houses seem to have lights on porches,up paths and driveways and randomly scattered on lawns that are illuminated for every hour of darkness.
    Maybe as with their petrol (gasoline) the Merkins just pay a lot less for it than we do ?

    • Ah but there is no need to worry there.  There is a very significant portion of the American population who, upon hearing a suspicious sound in the house will creep from room to room without ever switching on a light.  Maybe those creepers are aware of the wastage caused by non-invaded homes and wish to compensate?

    • Hey there, Brianf…  You should know…..  Do you stand behind your door waiting for callers?

  2. As a sort of aside, I was musing to myself the other day about historical dramas, which are one of the few types of TV that I occasionally watch and enjoy.  Particularly if they are British-made (or Irish, of course), they tend to do a good job now of showing the gritty, hard realities of life in the past, particularly the very distant past like the Middle Ages.  Except for one thing … why aren’t there loads of sick people around? The levels of disease, with no public sanitation of any kind and zero modern medicines, were enormous back then, particularly the dreaded Syphilis which, until the advent of TB in Victorian times, was far and away the biggest killer of them all.  When was the last time you saw an actor in one of these historical dramas covered in sores or infectious lesions or uttering the words: “God save me, the pox has me bad this time, m’lud,” whilst scratching frantically at his vital bits and pieces?  It seems that apart from where the plot demands it (a main character falling ill with a “fever” for example, or dying off, or a child falling dangerously sick in order to be saved by a doctor (usually) with a surprisingly advanced – like 400 years – amount of medical insight), or where the programme is a dramatic reconstruction of a specific illness like the Plague or something, no-one in the Middle Ages ever got ill at all, not even the peasants!  And the rich people always look so beautiful (which they often weren’t) and so clean (which they definitely weren’t, either).  Amazing.

  3. It always amazes me how people in films make arrangements.

    "How about dinner Thursday?"

    "I'd really like that"

    "Til Thursday then"

    "Fine, Bye"

    Excuse me?  Where are we going? Are you going to pick me up or shall I meet you there?  What time?  Sorry, can't make Thursday, how about the following Wednesday?  No, that's no good for me…….

    • So true!  They must all be psychic!

      And the way the heroine is all alone, scantily clad, made up to the nines, doors unlocked, windows open,evil marauder in the vicinity … Lock the door woman and put some clothes on!!!  Or the hero's glamourous side-kick in stilettoes breaking her heel in the mud… don't they have sensible shoes in America?

       

      • And when she breaks her heel, she takes both shoes off but never ever steps on a sharp stone.

  4. Grandad,
    Thanks, and I tend to agree with all you say.
    A couple of points relating to comments from GeorgeD and Jax.
    I agree, the lights are always on unless there’s been a spate of killings in the neighborhood and a friend calls on a friend. No answer to their knocking. Check door. Door open. Enter house/apartment. All is in total darkness. Move round house/apartment softly calling name. All done in the dark. Never ‘think’ to turn on a light.
    I vaguely remember an historical {hysterical?} costume ‘drama’ movie from the fifties{?} about Richard the Lionheart where the King announces to his Queen that he’s off on another of his adventures. As the Queen flounces from the room she says, “War, war, war; that’s all you think about Dicky Plantagenet!” It doesn’t get more factual than that.
    And finally, the old one: All you paranoid folk out there who check behind shower curtains for murderers; If you find one, what’s your plan?

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