John Walker's Electronic House

Things for which I would happily pay £100 a year:

To not have to shave

To never be asked “Are you sure you want to quit?” I’ll handle the responsibility for accidental quits myself.

To be chipped such that I can neither see nor hear public reminders to “take all my personal possessions when I exit the [insert ANYTHING ANYWHERE]”…

(On second thoughts thank goodness, I suppose, because when I get on a train I think all my personal possessions have to be left as an offering to the Train Monster, who without my donated property will otherwise eat my eyes. And I think it each and every time afresh, no matter what. As for aeroplanes, I ensure that all my valuable items are firmly stowed in the seat-back pockets before getting off, because it’s a polite tip to the pilot… Pardon? Really? Oh! Apparently you don’t have to do this! I’m supposed to take my valuable items with me when I get off the plane! How silly I’d feel if they didn’t remind me of this EVERY FIFTEEN SECONDS EVERYWHERE I GO.

You know what – if I leave my own stuff somewhere in public, that’s my own stupid fault. And don’t give me any crap about bombs – remember the news story about the people who found the suspicious bag on the train, and it turned out to be a bomb? NO! BECAUSE IT NEVER, EVER HAPPENS. Here’s how you know when they’re bombs: THEY EXPLODE.

You know what Thames Trains, how about instead of having the digital displays you’ve wasted trillions of pounds on installing to replace those presumably exhausting and money-consuming tannoy announcements, how about you maybe stop having it remind me to “please take all your personal possessions with you when leaving the train” (As opposed to what? My IMPERSONAL possessions? Items I own but for which I don’t feel any particular affiliation should be routinely left behind? Or are you warning me off taking everyone else’s personal possessions in the confusion of this horrifically complicated getting-off-something procedure through which I must be so meticulously babysat? Maybe you could make the infernally slowly scrolling sentence a bit more detailed, because the realms of ambiguity have left me all muddled. “Please do your best to remember to take with you all items that you brought with you when boarding the train and indeed any further items that you might have purchased during your journey when leaving the train which you should only do at the station to which you intended to travel please.”) the entire time, and maybe have it state the name of the next stop more often than, oh I don’t know, THE INTERVAL BETWEEN STOPS.

Er, I got distracted).

To have access to foodstuffs that are not sealed in triplicate and then encased in concrete. I somehow made it through the 80s when the plastic lid of the margarine and the margarine itself were not divided by the impermeable fortress of a piece of paper, and found that, despite the complete lack of flimsily sealing loose bits of plastic, at no point was I killed by a jar of jam.

To have access to the pavement/sidewalk equivalent of a ‘diamond lane’. Not, as you might immediately suspect, for people giving piggybacks, but simply for those who have passed a test to demonstrate that they are capable of the intricate task of walking in a straight line, and will therefore actually go somewhere at some point.

To have dinnerladies (or “Midday Supervisors” as I was recently told they’re now known) employed by restaurants and pubs, with the responsibility for stepping out when the room volume has become ludicrously loud – simply because everyone’s trying to be heard over the sound of everyone else trying to be heard – and sharply clap their hands and ask that “the noise level come down now please,” resetting things to a tolerable place for another fifteen minutes.

3WK has been one of my major sources for discovering new music for about six years. It’s an internet radio station, broadcasting free (but you can pay for a higher bandwidth stream, which you should, because they need the money) new “indie music”.

It’s the best selection of music I’m aware of, online or on radio, anywhere. The hit to miss ratio is astronomically better than anything else I’ve listened to. And it DOESN’T HAVE ADVERTS.

But that’s not the only reason to love them (although it’s enough). For years they have been in the frontlines of the battle against the RIAA’s attempts to destroy internet radio.

In fact, there was a time when they didn’t charge for their best streams. The RIAA’s forcing of “pay per play” rates on advertising-free internet broadcasters was something 3WK fought hard to prevent, but in the end the organisation (Nick points out that the RIAA are peculiar in their unashamed purely evil existence – they have literally no merit, no positive influence on anything in the music industry, or indeed in the world, and instead behave like comic book baddies) bought the laws they needed in order to win the court cases. There’s nothing the little guy can do in the face of billion dollar organisations simply purchasing the laws they want.

But that wasn’t enough. The RIAA now want more money from the few stations that were able to survive their last attack. 3WK depends upon the donations of its listeners to continue, and its listeners kept it going. Further entirely needless increases will likely kill off even the most resiliant. And remember, these are perfectly legitimate broadcasters, following the rules.

Once again, 3WK are heavily involved in the court battles to protect internet radio. But it’s costing them a fortune. They need money, and they deserve money. These guys are heroes.

Head on over and donate.

Right, get your notebooks out everyone. It’s time for another lesson in being not an idiot.

Reading through this nonsensical thread over on EG, Stuart Campbell steps in to explain something that had been misunderstood from his own article and referenced inaccurately. Someone else doesn’t understand and pompously criticises, Stu mockingly points this out, and as per usual in all forum-style conversations, the entire thing descends into tiresome gibberish.

However, it reminds me of a couple of important things to note.

The first thing is: the difference between someone’s being an idiot and someone’s being unintelligent is an idiot has no idea he’s unintelligent. And this leads to all sorts of problems. The person being unintelligent hears something that contradicts their own incorrect understanding on a matter and either learns, or retreats. The idiot takes loud offense. This is problematic, as it means the person being an idiot will only ever shout angrily, no matter the debate.

Let’s create a hypothetical example. Let’s say someone is angrily stating that a well-received and award winning film is actually terrible, and everyone who likes it is wrong. Others reply saying, “I agree! It’s rubbish! Thank goodness you said that!”. I, thinking that the film is rather splendid, and having detailed reasons why, reply saying why I think it is good.

Now, the person hating the film has two choices. They can listen, and make arguments against to defend their position should they maintain it. Or they can make an irrelevant point that ignores anything that might challenge their position. The idiotic response is to choose the latter. So he says, “Everyone else thinks it’s rubbish. You’re the only one defending it. So that proves something, eh?”

Despite this being a frustrating nonsense, and certainly not addressing any of the points made, you have no choice but to respond to it. A simple solution would be, “Well, the most respected critics all defend it with their well-reasoned reviews. Now, can we get back to the points I made?”

“So now you’re saying only journalists are allowed opinions?”

There’s little hope in such a situation. The problem is, the person is refusing to listen, and refusing to accept the possibility that they’re being an idiot. So nevermind that their ‘point’ was succinctly proven wrong – instead they pretend that a totally different conversation took place, and respond angrily to that fiction. I am left in an ever-more confusing and frustrating position, as now if I wish to continue I have to defend the point – that I certainly don’t believe only employed film critics are allowed opinions, never have thought that, never would think it, wouldn’t say it, and perhaps most pertinently, didn’t say it. But the idiotic response has already won, as now I’m desperately defending myself against this most irrelevant of points, and any reasoned logic I once employed is lost in the bottom-wind.

The second thing is: no one seems to be able to recognise the difference between a particular behaviour described, and an assault on their entire character.

In the EG thread, Stu is impolite to some of the people who are rudely dismissing his words, ignoring what he’s saying, and instead pretending he’s making the arguments they want him to have said. They want those responses because those are the ones for which they have practised replies. They neatly fit into categories they recognise. So, as an example, it’s assumed that Stu is slagging off the game Geometry Wars 2. He’s not, and indeed he has very clearly stated that he likes the game. But now the above behaviour appears, and Stu is left having to defend himself against things he hasn’t said, and arguments he wasn’t making. And oddly enough, becomes frustrated and annoyed at having to do this. So he labels the behaviour – he calls it stupid, idiotic, childish, naive, etc. And here is the crux of this point: the idiotic response is to believe this is a description of their character.

Of course it’s a description of their current behaviour. This isn’t a difficult conclusion – it’s impossible for it to be anything else. Stu doesn’t know these people, has never spoken to them before. They write under nicknames, they are an anonymous blue name writing something stupid. However, “You are being a moron”, which is patently true in the above examples, is interpreted as “You are always, and have always been, a moron,” and the person indignantly hollers at this grotesque injustice. (For someone like Stu, who has a public profile, the idiot’s response goes a stage further as they attempt to exact revenge for their own imagined affront, and use the personal information they have on him to insult him personally. They become the perpetrators of the crime they so condemn, in what I shall now label the Idiot’s Irony).

And why? Because in both cases, the alternative is allowing the possibility of being wrong. And god forbid that we should ever be wrong! In fact, in a gross distortion of reality, it is being wrong that is understood as being idiotic by today’s arguing masses. This is such a horrendous mistake, and it breaks my heart. Recognising that one is wrong is so FAR from being idiotic. It’s the very opposite! It’s admitting that one has learned! Being wrong is a joy – it’s a time when you learned something new, gained knowledge, improved your intellect. And yet it’s so fiercely hated that both the above situations are the absolute norm. Idiotic behaviour with the inability to recognise itself. That way, you never have to be wrong. You never have to learn a new thing. You never have to think.

Oh happy day.

A beautiful little soundbite emerges to play each and every time I read one of these legions of tards pronounce, “Reviews should be objective. Just because one person likes it, doesn’t mean it’s good.”

Edit: I would like to stress that I enjoy being proven wrong, and will willingly back down if out-argued, or concede confusion if unbalanced from my position. I say this because so often it’s assumed that someone’s stating something means that they will refuse to listen or change their mind. Also, this is not a cop-out for the below. These are my thoughts that I’ve had and are what I think at the time of writing. I currently think I’m right.

I appear to have forgotten how to go to sleep, and so after two hours of lying still, wide awake, I got up and flicked around the internet, and noticed that Kieron had finally posted a response to the idiotic ramblings of some failed writer on Slashdot about how he doesn’t like any videogames journalism.

Which has broken the damn for the thought I’ve been throwing against the wall for the last few weeks, biting my tongue on, but now tired and pissed off, will share.

For those who haven’t followed the current eruption of the idiot volcano, it has become the terribly in thing to respond to any piece of videogames writing with, “well, it’s just one person’s opinion, and opinions are subjective…” Now, of course this is a thick seam of nonsense that constantly bubbles around under the ground, but it’s recently that I’ve noticed the caps blowing of the mountains as this lazy non-thought is spouted on every forum, blog and comments thread.

There are two key responses. One most people will refuse to stop and consider for even a second, the other I hope will receive some, “Ooh – yes”s.

1) We’ve killed the expert

People bandy around the phrase ‘post-modernism’ with little thought. I had entire modules of my degree with the phrase in their title, despite no one giving a useful description of what was so ‘post’ about it. In fact, in a splendid display of hyper-appropriateness, it is the very nature of what people mislabel ‘post-modernism’ that leads to its mislabelling as such. It has to be something New. Post-enlightenment, Modernism required that we search for the New; replace the previous and out-moded religious and authoritarian regimes with the emerging authority of science and the specific expert. Beliefs and opinions were no longer subjected upon you by a self-enforced higher power (of whatever form), but by seeking the thoughts of the educated and learned expert on the matter. Glorious times. But the value of the Expert was not the inherent nature of Modernism. Modernism was merely the drive to replace the current with the New. And so that which is identified as ‘post’ Modernism is merely Modernism continuing its usual pattern. We’re replacing the current with the New, and this time the current is the Expert, and the replacement the Individual.

It is manifested in multifarious forms, all-encompassing and suffocatingly prevalent. Take medicine. Modernism began by giving us the trained and qualified Doctor, from whom we sought medical attention for our ailments. But now, as Modernism recycles itself (let’s call it Mod2, although I’m sure one could identify many other previous stages), the Doctor is pushed into a small corner, his opinion merely that, and the opinions of many to be taken on board before the Individual decides which is ‘right for them’. This is how we now have flim-flam and con-artistry like homeopathy – whereby an ailment is treated by giving a substance that causes the ailment in a healthy person, diluted down until it doesn’t exist any more, to the ill person, in return for vast sums of money (these substances used to be known as ‘snake oil’) – accepted as equals. Yes, we’ll seek the advice of the specialist who has trained for eight years to become a doctor then spent twenty years in his specialty, but we’ll also ask the person who wants to sell us water, the lady who will wave magnets near us, and the man who pokes our toes. So what if none of these ‘alternative medicines’ have never been shown to have any demonstrable effect above placebo in any tests ever – that’s testing by OLD Science methods. We’ll decide which one we think is right.

This is one example amongst a million, and also within that collection appears games criticism. Oh yes, that’s right – I’m about to argue that I’m an Expert. Quickly, reject his statements, where’s his modesty?! How dare he! Please note: this is the reaction of Mod2 in action. The action of one person claiming Expert is now understood as a threatening attempt to rob the Individual. If I am Expert over you, then your opinion, you the Individual, are challenged for your Holy Status. Another’s Expert status is an affront on the Individualist totalitarianism. And this is the first reason the ridiculous argument is dragged out on every occasion.

My claim is hardly immense. I suggest Expertise in whether adventure games are good or bad. It can hardly be considered boasting. Having played almost every available adventure game of the last fifteen years, I claim training and knowledge, and from this, some authority on the subject. Others are more Expert than me on the subject. I look up to them, and seek to learn more from them. Richard Cobbett springs immediately to mind.

But this notion remains intolerable – it is to suggest that the Individual should listen to the Expert, and we’ve killed the Expert.

2) We won’t admit we like something bad

I hope this gets a more positive reaction. It follows on from the previous example, but to prevent the tiresome suggestion that this is self-aggrandisation, I shall leap genres and Experts.

I consider Tim Stone to be an Expert on strategy games. I don’t know strategy games at all well, and don’t especially enjoy playing them. Were I to play a strategy game that is widely considered amongst strategy game Experts to be extremely good, I would be very unlikely to get pleasure from playing it. Were I to apply the logic of stage 1, I should be able to categorically state, without fear of the possibility of contradiction, that this game is a bad game. It fails to entertain me, and so it is not good. Nevermind Tim’s extensive knowledge, experience and understanding of the genre, and his educated ability to identify its strengths and performance – I disagree, and I, the Individual, cannot be questioned or challenged. But that is still stage 1.

Stage 2 becomes relevant when I find a strategy game that is widely considered by Experts in the matter to be very poor, but I enjoy it very much. Stage 2 suggests that they are wrong to think it a bad strategy game, because I, the Individual, am getting pleasure from playing it, and therefore it must be good.

What I am missing is that it’s very possible that I might be getting pleasure from playing a bad game.

This, also, is intolerable to the Individual. It threatens the totalitarian regime. It suggests that faults exist. It at once accepts that the Individual’s response to something might not dictate its inherent quality, and suggests that the Expert’s alternative response might be right.

I hope that an example of this is more immediately palatable via pop music. Take The Corrs’, ‘Play It On The Radio’. Someone might well enjoy this song. They might associate it with happy memories, or simply derive pleasure from the painstakingly simplistic structure. It’s immediately accessible, it’s instantly possible to sing along with, and it’s so astonishingly cynically titled that it will receive endless, eternal radio play. Thus it will gain familiarity, popularity, and enjoyment. But does that make it a good piece of music? Does it merit 95% when measured against all music? Could you put it alongside Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and say, “these two are equally as good”?

I would hope all ridiculous protests would be dropped this far in, and one could say, “No, it’s not as good. But I still really enjoy it and want to listen to it.”

And good. That is very good. In this particular case, with this particular song, it makes me worry for you, and the entire music industry, but good. Because we’ve reached a point where we can accept that even though one might rather drill their ears than listen to Mozart, and like nothing better than dancing around our room singing the voice-synthesised harmonies of Westlife into our hairbrushes, they might still recognise that Mozart is a better composer than Ronan Keating.

So is it then not equally possible that while I might enjoy playing this woeful RTS, and yet get nothing out of a game of Rome: Total War, it’s perfectly acceptable for me to recognise that one is not better than the other simply because of my visceral response, and that I should trust the Expert on this matter over my own ill-informed and under-educated reaction?

Conclusion

People are reacting angrily to every review they read, and indeed the simple existence of reviews, because they are now perceived as threats against their Individualist Holiness.

For one last time, in case it has not been clear, this is not a piece to say: ‘Everyone should listen to me because I’m an Expert and they’re idiots who don’t know anything’. This is a piece to say: Recognise those who are Experts, and accept that their Expertise is not a threat to you, that your Individualism is your lonely death, and that enjoying something bad does not make it good.

So we can get rid of comment threads on reviews now, can’t we?

Good heavens, it’s like an audio mirror.

I’d like to issue a public apology to everyone who has come near me in the last two months, and thus has inevitably heard me go on mercilessly about something I heard on Loveline. Please understand it’s a sickness, and while I deserve your wrath, your sympathy would also be appreciated. Anyway, so, here’s something I heard on Loveline.

This is like a massage for me. It’s therapy.

There are better renditions of this rant, without some idiot going “yeah” in the background all the way through. But this will do for now.

Adam Carolla brings sweet joy into my life.

(Also, here is rude one about vaginas, which makes me laugh until I cry every time I hear it).

I’m falling to bits.

Not in a rubbish metaphorical/emotional way, but in an actually bits falling off type of way.

First and foremost I’ve got a big fold of skin on the pad of my left index finger, flapping about like a flag, BEGGING ME to bite it off. But it’s a trick. A trick I’ve fallen for too many times already. “Eat me,” it whispers. “Gnaw my loose flap off – it will bite clean and order will be restored.” But it’s a lie. A cruel and wicked lie. Each nibble leads to another further tear. There’s currently a 2cm long streak of absent skin, which reaches a good 5mm at its most broad. Yesterday I had the good idea of putting a plaster on it to stop me from eating my entire hand, and to muffle its luring voice, but today I realised that it was a rubbish idea after all. Plasters make things moist, and moisture prevents the wound from solidifying. It only encouraged the flappage. So now I have entered a crazed endurance test, knowing it’s there, hearing it entice me, and somehow not consuming my own flesh.

Also broken is my back. After a year and a half of sitting an a peculiar 45 degree angle at this desk – the only way it’s possible to accomodate my monitor’s ludicrous depth – something in my right shoulder blade has had quite enough contortion, and now the moment I begin typing I get shooting pains beginning in my back, and rushing down my right arm and into my fingers. THIS HURTS. WRITING THIS HURTS. But it is my duty to tell you of my painful self-consumption and twisted deformities. I shall not shirk on my duty.

Talking of shooting pains down the arm, my left arm now has the proud boast that it requires An Operation. Last week I was electrocuted by a doctor to prove it. I joked to people, saying I was going to be electrocuted, knowing as I did that they would be passing a current through my ulna nerve for this test. I hadn’t realised that it would HURT A LOT. They actually did electrocute me. The pulses of deadly electricity caused my hand to open and close itself involuntarily, thus making me more machine than man, and concluded with the announcement that my ulna nerve has indeed become caught up with a bad crowd in the elbow.

My legs are working for now.

I’m going to my parents’ place for Christmas tomorrow. Back on the 28th. IF I LIVE THAT LONG.

Only in this shithole country can it be this stupidly cold and still piss down torrential rain without a hint of snow.

And only in these weather conditions does the British public pull out all the stops of their fully extended idiocy. Not just being a bit dozy, but the sort of stupid that gains sentience and starts running around knocking things over.

Having hidden in a coffee shop for an hour and a half, struggling with some horrid GBA game I’m reviewing, and reading a relaxing chapter of a book about substance abuse, I thought the despicable weather must have calmed a little. I ventured outside, and while not pleasant in the least, it had at least slowed its fury. Until I stepped out of the doorway.

Now, this is probably just a me-thing, but when it’s raining droves of barely-thawed icicles, what I don’t want to do is stand around aimlessly on the pavement, staring into space. I’m a maverick. I live life on the edge. In fact, I live life just off the edge, with my feet perpetually in the skiddle-de-skiddle-de moment one adopts before plummeting to the bottom of the ravine. I want to, as strange as it must seem, go where I’m going.

But that’s just me. And I mean that literally. Every single person – EVERY SINGLE PERSON – in the whole of Bath, had slowed down to the most moronic trance-like stasis. Attempting to walk down the pavement was somewhat like running down a corridor in Tomb Raider, with the spinning blades, crumbling walkways and wall-fired spears replaced with slo-mo zombies. What I wanted to do was be over there, in the distance, very very soon. But I had to stop every two to three steps as yet another glacial cretin decided to grind to a complete halt in the middle of everything for no reason at all. I imagine if I were to wander back to the same place now, they’d still be there, just staring, all stopped. It was as if the mechanical cogworks of Bath’s dullards had collectively wound down all at once.

Getting inside Waitrose was no better. Now, supermarkets are the natural habitat of the phlegmatic, and one should never enter without being at least prepared to endure viscous inanity. As a guide, I find that the volume of stupidity is usually indirectly proportional to the price of cheese in the shop. Enter a fine cheese specialist, and you’ll meet only the most polite and intelligent clientele. Go to ASDA, and you can fully expect to need protective clothing and a weapon. Waitrose, being so ludicrously middle class and overpriced, should at least afford some sort of protection.

One man. ONE MAN, didn’t walk into me, step out in front of me, hit me with a basket, randomly stop in front of me, block all possible routes from the exact spot I was standing on, stand in front of the shelf I needed to get to, facing outward, as if dead and carefully propped up there… One man. And I remember, because it was while negotiating the route between about nine DNA-deficient shoppers who had parked their trollies, baskets and arses in a slalom positions down the aisle. I was already running this gauntlet, edging crabwise between their obstacles, and saw a man at the other end needing to get through. In every other circumstance in today’s delightful outing, that person’s response would be to march directly at me, until I had to lunge out of their way. This man saw the situation, assessed it in a split second, and stepped to the side so I’d be out of his way as quickly as possible, and he’d not be in mine. I thanked him with a look on my face that would have been fitting if he’d dived into a frozen lake to rescue my own child.

What scared me most was how, after enduring an endless barrage of this insanity for about ten minutes (I was only buying a couple of things – I can’t afford to shop at Waitrose – but that’s how incredibly slowly the whole bloody place was moving), my external tolerance snapped, and my arms began cartwheeling around in furious frustration with the 305th person to randomly stop and stare without giving a crap about a single other person near them. Out-stretched limbs of rage, waved IN THEIR FACES, and nothing. Not the angry glare you can normally expect from idiots like this, who when they ram their trolley into your legs (that are already pressed against the frozen items counter in ASDA with nowhere to go) for the THIRD TIME, look at you with indignant disbelief because you’d been so shockingly barbaric as to say “OW!” at them. But today, blank nothing. Not even the flicker of a pupil at the moving colours in front of them. Comas. It’s the only explanation. Some sort of motion-capable coma induced by cold rain.

When earlier attempting to cross the pavement (all six foot of it) to get to the Waitrose entrance, a clearly highly trained team of synchronised dipshits managed to arrange themselves into a horseshoe around me, meaning I had nowhere to go but back into the road I’d just stepped out of. Incredulous that so many people weren’t noticing how they were in the way of everyone else IN THE WORLD in that remarkably selfish crescent, my mouth fell agape, my arms flew into the air in complete disbelief. And over the other side of the pavement, a man, a different man which gives me some hope, saw my situation, and smiled a pitying smile of understanding and sorrow.

I now understand how God felt when he decided it was necessary to kill everyone in the world. Those two guys who offered me the slimmest glimmer of faith in the species shall be chosen, plus a couple of girls which I’ll trust them to pick themselves, and the rest of you will die. Just so you know.

I DON’T CARE ABOUT HOW SOME OLD DRUNK MAN IN HOSPITAL IS.

Thank you.

Sorry for going all sci-fi internet nerd, but… My favourite TV show of all time is American Gothic. It hit when I was just the right age to fully appreciate the dark, cruel stories, and the excellent mix of small-town drama with ghosts and demons. Gary Cole as Sheriff Lucas Buck perfectly executed the character of the most despicably evil man imaginable, a murderer and rapist, possibly the devil incarnate, who you wanted to succeed. The internal conflict generated by the realisation that you were instinctively on the side of this monster – that’s clever TV.

But of course, as is the Law with any decent television, it had to be screwed around by the channels that showed it. American Gothic received the full deal. CBS in the US decided that it was getting too dark for the timeslot they’d put it in (er, one week, since it was rarely ever in the same time slot, let alone on the same day), and so held some episodes back because of their content. The programme was heavily arc-ed, with crucial long-term plots trickling out week by week. Merlyn, the ghost of Caleb’s sister, and somewhat entire family, is banished in one particular episode, then back, then searched for, then recovered, then missing, then back again… Anyone watching had to think in five dimensions to follow the story. It was then pulled from the schedules, and then months later, with no warning, showed at random hours, with the missing five episodes never aired. Channel 4, picking up the show, obviously had no problems with content, and were showing it in their formerly excellent 10pm slot. And yet, for reasons unfathomable, decided to air it in the order CBS had. Investigating this at the time, Channel 4 told me that they were being sent the episodes by the distributors one week at a time, airing them as they received them. I contacted the distributors who told me that Channel 4 were simply lying, and that they’d sent them all 22 at once. Marvellous stuff.

Sci-Fi picked up the show in the States and aired it in completion, in order, but it never received a proper network viewing either in the States or in the UK. So finally, after ten years, it’s this week been released on DVD. My boxset arrived in the post this morning. Nice embossed box, all 22 episodes, a few crappy extras like deleted scenes, even a couple of commentaries. But guess what?! Yes! They’ve put them onto to the DVD18 flipper discs… in the wrong order! The lazy, cheap-ass, cretins at Universal couldn’t be bothered to notice even their own episode descriptions. The back of the box for the episode FIFTH FROM LAST says, “XXXXX and XXXXX face each other in a final, evil battle.” Something of a clue? Even the commentaries by series creator Shaun Cassidy on the episodes describe them as being the end of the series! HOW?

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the correct order of episodes, and where they appear on the discs, kindly stolen from here.

# Pilot (Disc 1, Side A, Episode 1)
# A Tree Grows in Trinity (Disc 1, Side A, Episode 2)
# Eye of the Beholder (Disc 1, Side A, Episode 3)
# Damned If You Don’t (Disc 1, Side B, Episode 1)
# Potato Boy (Disc 3, Side A, Episode 4)
# Dead to the World (Disc 1, Side B, Episode 2)
# Meet the Beetles (Disc 1, Side B, Episode 3)
# Strong Arm of the Law (Disc 1, Side B, Episode 4)
# To Hell and Back (Disc 2, Side B, Episode 3)
# The Beast Within (Disc 2, Side B, Episode 2)
# Rebirth (Disc 2, Side A, Episode 1)
# Ring of Fire (Disc 3, Side B, Episode 1)
# Resurrector (Disc 2, Side A, Episode 2)
# Inhumanitas (Disc 2, Side A, Episode 3)
# The Plague Sower (Disc 2, Side A, Episode 4)
# Doctor Death Takes a Holiday (Disc 2, Side B, Episode 1)
# Learning to Crawl (Disc 2, Side B, Episode 4)
# Echo of Your Last Goodbye (Disc 3, Side B, Episode 2)
# Strangler (Disc 3, Side B, Episode 3)
# Triangle (Disc 3, Side A, Episode 1)
# The Buck Stops Here (Disc 3, Side A, Episode 2)
# Requiem (Disc 3, Side A, Episode 3)