On the plus side

1. The new Pet Shop Boys album is great. It was produced by Xenomania, so has some very tuney bits, but is also very Pet Shop Boys. PSB-like moments include:
• Chris vocals: "Who do you think you are, Captain Britain?" deflating nostalgic Neil lyrics about picnics of yesteryear
• References to nineteenth-century European politics in "The King of Rome" (which doesn't just sound like a Pet Shop Boys song, but sounds like a specific Pet Shop Boys song, perhaps off Behaviour)
• Tchaikovsky sample
• Song about Tony Blair. It's called "Legacy"
• Vulnerable love song, called "Vulnerable", which was apparently once supposed to be a duet with Carlo Bruni
There's also a bit in the second half of "More than a Dream" where it suddenly goes all Roxette. This is the best song on the album, I think. Here it is in rather poor quality:


2. Battlestar Galactica hurray! There was something in the Guardian the other day about how this might be better than the Wire. I think it was one of the Graun's irritating troll pieces hoping to raise a reaction by transgressing some given of leftish social mores about which none of us real people, i.e. not journalists, actually care anyway. Of course I prefer Battlestar Galactica -- I gave up on the Wire in boredom and mild disgust quite early on in the second series. (Although I did like the music -- it made me think I should listen to more hip hop.) But Battlestar Galactica I do like very much. I have a lot of respect for sci-fi and fantasy; they're too easily dismissed as mere genre, but, from Swift to Vonnegut, they're the best way of exploring ideas without being tedious or pompous. Of course sci-fi can be tedious or pompous when it's done badly, but a straight literary novel about ideas is often unreadable. I prefer these things in parables, it's more interesting.

As for Battlestar Galactica itself, the Guardian writer is right about the start of season 3 -- it is slightly breathtaking how they seem to be saying "America, this is how the Iraqis see you." Could they even have got away with this in any other context? Cherie Blair was pretty harshly slapped down for saying that she could understand why some people ended up feeling that suicide bombing was the only option. This is why sci-fi and fantasy are great. And a scene at the Cylons' war council is pretty sharp too. Plus something which happened in series two made me go so far as to formulate a personal philosophy, and I almost got as far as asking some philosophers I know what it's called so that I could say "I am a something-ian" or "I subscribe to something-ism". This to me is intelligent television; something that doesn't lay it on too heavily, but provokes thought. I never got why the Wire was supposed to be so intelligent. Because it's showing lots of sides of the same story? Because it's full of people who are variously compromised, and things happen because of chance political circumstances rather than for ideal reasons? These seem to be just truisms to me. Haven't cop shows always been about those things? I am genuinely curious about this, and would welcome any better explanation of what it is that I so obviously missed. In the meantime Battlestar Galactica has fantastic space explosions, and sinister robots based on ancient Greek helmets, and people who believe in one true god emerging from strange baths.

3. I liked Lucy Mangan's obituary for Jade Goody. Also her take on motherhood seems pretty spot on to me, insofar as I know anything about it, and I'm rather glad not to. Maybe Lucy Mangan could be Britain's Jon Stewart? We could rather do with one, and it's clear Charlie Brooker isn't going to manage it.