Ill-Advised Anecdote Time

If there's TV on in this house, it is typically BBC Prime. (Or a movie file played over the network by way of a clever piece of multimedia technology, but that's another story altogether.) BBC Prime is a mélange of BBC programs to be shown outside of the UK. It is decidedly heavy on medical dramas, The Weakest Link, and Eastenders (which, to my eternal shame, I really quite enjoy - I could give reasons, but it would all end up being very defensive). However, the alternatives are German/French/Italian language channels, which we would not understand; CNN, which I would shout at; or an intelligent, enlightened conversation away from the flickering televisual eye of Argus, which is right out.

We were watching something at one point - most likely it was Children In Need, for the Doctor Who segment - and Liberty X were announced. I had seen these people before and had a fairly Revelation 3:15-16* reaction to them. I'd never heard their name, though, and at its announcement I started a moment.

"Are they announcing the advent of some kind of American superrobot?" I said**.

My mother set me right, and I was wholly disappointed. Nonetheless, a seed had been planted in my mind.

"It would be piloted by the clones of former Presidents," I murmured to myself, "and fuelled by either patriotism or jingoism depending on the episode..."

This is where I take a brief detour to mention a habit of mine. I adore reading reviews of bad movies, particularly - perhaps specifically - if they contain a full synopsis with no care for spoilers. I'm not sure exactly why that is, but I probably get more enjoyment out of that than watching the movies themselves. At any rate, I was reading The Bad Movie Report's review of a movie called Crippled Masters (the second review on this particular page), when I saw the sentences:

"Then there is the concept of ancient artisans crafting two interlocking jade figurines just in case some day an armless and a legless man need to fight an evil warlord. This impresses me a being as likely as the Founding Fathers somehow encrypting the blueprints for a giant robot into the Constitution, just in case we ever need it."

Quite apart from being a good line in and of itself, this has assured me that my throwaway remark is actually tapping into some groundswell of sentiment, and any moment now the appropriate (or inappropriate, depending on opinion) will be made and make billions of dollars at the box office. So I'm making this post in order to either look entirely prophetic or to challenge for the copyright in a piece of frivolous litigation. You know, either/or.

(The bad guy could be a dastardly high-ranking American official, working with a secret cabal of British Neo-Tories in a shocking attempt to revive the British Empire! And the official could turn out to be the clone of Benedict Arnold! I really think I'm on to something here.)

As a minor note; I have just the other day finished an original fiction piece Drawing A Line at gameverse (link leads to the FicWad page). As I've not written much for the last few months, I consider this quite a triumph, and shall now do the Dance of Joy for days.

* KJV: I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. It's a vivid image.
** I don't think I said this. I think I stammered more, and didn't use the word "advent". "American superrobot", I think, was still there.