Q's and V's

'The best way to fight hate is with more hate,' said Cartman. These are not new eps of South Park, just ones I hadn't seen.
Cartman had upset his friends during a classroom presentation by claiming that ginger kids were suffering from an incurable disease called 'gingervitis'. During the night, Stan, Kyle and Kenny used hair dye, bleach and henna to turn Eric into a 'ginger'. The only way this could have been funnier was if Trey Parker and Matt Stone had had the kids do what British kids do. When using the word like this, they turn the 'g's' hard with the result that it sounds so much more like an insult.
Eric Cartman being who he is, is quickly leading all of the ginger-haired kids in the town in a campaign of terror against everyone else.
When I was first teaching, still in my training phase, I 'taught' a boy called Ben Q. He had ginger hair and he was a bully like Cartman. Well, bully's not quite the right word, he was more like a London gangster. He referred to the school as his 'manor'. And his rule was tinged with a sense of fairness. The class he was in was most definitely under his control, but at some point during every lesson he would say,
'Now we're going to do the work for Miss,' and they would all settle down and do just that.
My Head of Department, a little Welsh Dragon would say to me (you have to imagine a strong Welsh accent),
'You have to be more HORRible to them,' I was NEVER in charge of that class, Ben Q was, but between the two Q's I learned an amazing amount about classroom management.

The film 'The New World,' is basically about the Pocahontas story, but more accurate than Disney;) It was a good film, I'm now quite an admirer of the director, you could watch it for the historical details and the cinematography alone.
It also seemed very chaste. Neither Colin Farrell nor Christian Bale, playing Pocahontas's two lovers ever seemed to touch her very much, a couple of hugs and one or two almost brotherly kisses, mostly it was the light caressing her - and very well done too. Then I looked the film up on imdb.com and discovered the reason for all this. The half Peruvian actress who played the Indian girl was actually fifteen when it was filmed. Oops. That must have somewhat weirded out Irish Colin (30) and Welsh Christian (32). Nicely done though, nicely done.

But V for Vendetta is going to be a new classic. Dark as all get out and we never once got to see Hugo Weaving's little elfin face. Awesomely put together. I freaked Ben out by telling him that this is what would really happen to Britain if a conservative government got in, but in fact there are no conservatives anymore, just little pudgy-faced 'Dave' Cameron.
The only thing that let the film down for me, because it grated on the ear, was Nathalie Portman's English/Australian accent. I wish she had gone for one or t'other. She probably thought she had.
'I've never seen those Guy Fawkes masks,' said Ben,
'Well all that tells me is that you've never been in Portsmouth around the fifth of November,' said I.
I loved Stephen Fry, is seems like a long time since he had an acting role to get his teeth into and with former comedy partner Hugh Laurie wowing the States as 'House' it's nice to see him back in the saddle. The boy done good.

I was a bit saddened to see that there is still no integrity in the Press, and this is the Thunderer too. A fellow blogger, albeit a rather more raunchy one who had a book based on her blog published, has been outed by the Times. If you want to stay anonymous so that your parents and general work colleagues don't know how many time a day you play with yourself and which of their husbands you have bonked, then you bloody well should be able to. Damn shabby show Times old girl, damn shabby.