Burning issue
I was going to blog this BBC NEWS puff piece about spontaneous human combustion yesterday, but we were having a hot day for the postings, so held off till today.
The BBC piece is just an elaborate promo for Bleak House*, but it strikes me as being one of the internet "hot button" topics, the sort of thing where you'll find the same information circulating endlessly.
There's nothing in the BBC article that I didn't learn years ago, looking up the subject in what used to be called a Public Library, which is what we had before the internet. Our public library has been turned into a joke shop slash stationers slash second hand bookshop slash internet cafe slash place for old people to wait for the post office to open. There may be a small corner still dedicated to actual books.
I was researching SHC (or spontaneous human combustion, for short) because I was working on a script idea called "Strange Fish."
The story involved a couple of paranormal researchers (this was before paranormal researchers on the telly were ten a penny) who went to an isolated fishing village (this was before isolated fishing villages on the telly were etc.) because they'd heard about a cluster of SHC incidents.
The village was fairly cut off - a place that used to have two roads going in, but one of them blocked by a landslip and never repaired - and still had one fishing boat that went out and caught fish that were sold and consumed locally. One of the village's claims to fame, mentioned early on, is that it was a place you could still go to a chip shop and get locally caught fish and chips.
So these researchers show up and start investigating the SHC cases, looking for the usual possible causes - smoking, sparks from open fires - and growing increasingly puzzled when two of the victims don't fit the standard pattern: not old, not ill, not smokers, no open fire...
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*On the subject of elaborate promos, I was sent a Travel Pictionary set by a vendor this week. A year or two ago, I got a remote control car. These things do not dispose me well towards the vendor concerned. I learned by email this morning that Shania Twain has put her name on a perfume, too, and that said perfume will be integrated into an episode of the US version The Apprentice. Which just goes to show that reality TV shows are just elaborate advertisements.
Although the BBC are the guilty party in the case of SHC (dressing up a promo for a BBC drama as a news item), they're also frequent victims. I've lost count of the number of times Peter Allen on Drive has been interviewing somebody and realised halfway through the interview that he was taking part in a PR exercise. The Silly Season, so-called, is all about these exercises ("A report from the Internet Foundation has found that 85% of all web users are known to drink Pokey Pola while they browse..."), but it's Silly Season all year round now, innit?
The BBC piece is just an elaborate promo for Bleak House*, but it strikes me as being one of the internet "hot button" topics, the sort of thing where you'll find the same information circulating endlessly.
There's nothing in the BBC article that I didn't learn years ago, looking up the subject in what used to be called a Public Library, which is what we had before the internet. Our public library has been turned into a joke shop slash stationers slash second hand bookshop slash internet cafe slash place for old people to wait for the post office to open. There may be a small corner still dedicated to actual books.
I was researching SHC (or spontaneous human combustion, for short) because I was working on a script idea called "Strange Fish."
The story involved a couple of paranormal researchers (this was before paranormal researchers on the telly were ten a penny) who went to an isolated fishing village (this was before isolated fishing villages on the telly were etc.) because they'd heard about a cluster of SHC incidents.
The village was fairly cut off - a place that used to have two roads going in, but one of them blocked by a landslip and never repaired - and still had one fishing boat that went out and caught fish that were sold and consumed locally. One of the village's claims to fame, mentioned early on, is that it was a place you could still go to a chip shop and get locally caught fish and chips.
So these researchers show up and start investigating the SHC cases, looking for the usual possible causes - smoking, sparks from open fires - and growing increasingly puzzled when two of the victims don't fit the standard pattern: not old, not ill, not smokers, no open fire...
====
*On the subject of elaborate promos, I was sent a Travel Pictionary set by a vendor this week. A year or two ago, I got a remote control car. These things do not dispose me well towards the vendor concerned. I learned by email this morning that Shania Twain has put her name on a perfume, too, and that said perfume will be integrated into an episode of the US version The Apprentice. Which just goes to show that reality TV shows are just elaborate advertisements.
Although the BBC are the guilty party in the case of SHC (dressing up a promo for a BBC drama as a news item), they're also frequent victims. I've lost count of the number of times Peter Allen on Drive has been interviewing somebody and realised halfway through the interview that he was taking part in a PR exercise. The Silly Season, so-called, is all about these exercises ("A report from the Internet Foundation has found that 85% of all web users are known to drink Pokey Pola while they browse..."), but it's Silly Season all year round now, innit?
posted by Anonymous at
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
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