Savage Popcorn

William Berg, an American classics professor, has discovered (via Slashdot) that the Monty Python Dead Parrot Sketch is 1600 years old. The original version, told by Greek comedy duo Hierocles and Philagrius, concerns a man who complains to his friend that he was sold a slave who dies in his service.

His companion replies: “When he was with me, he never did any such thing!”

The joke was discovered in a collection of 265 jokes called Philogelos: The Laugh Addict, which dates from the fourth century AD and which has now been published as an ebook.

Satirical genius, Chris Morris has been developing a comedy about Islamic terrorists, centring on a group of would-be suicide bombers from the North of England. Morris has said of the project that he wanted to do for Islamic terrorism what Dad’s Army did for the Nazis by showing them as ‘scary but also ridiculous’. And not a moment too soon.

However, both the BBC and Channel 4 have rejected the comedy as being too controversial for TV.

The good news, however, is that Film4 is putting up the money to develop the project as a film.

A Channel 4 spokeswoman told trade magazine Broadcast: ‘Channel 4 has a long history of working with Chris Morris, and a significant funding contribution towards his latest project is being made.

‘It was agreed at a very early stage that the project would work best as a film and from this point was developed through Film4.’

There is no title, script or release date as yet. But if this does go all the way into production then we can all look forward to Morris’ big screen début.

The Klingons for Jesus are coming

In fact not only should Klingons worship Jesus but Jesus is the messiah the Klingons have been waiting for all along.

It’s certainly the most consistent religious website I’ve seen in a long time.

Via Pharyngula

From Twitch comes some good news for fans of Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia. He has signed on to direct and co-write a live action adaptation of Edgar P. Jacobs’ The Yellow “M”.

Things are even better for Spanish speakers (and those of us who remain optimistic about subtitled DVD sets) as he is also co-writing, co-producing and directing a 26 episode Spanish SF sitcom called Pluton Verbenero which is slated for a September première.

According to io9, there are seven types of manager and all seven types have been a Star Trek captain. So if you want the know how to handle a bad boss, a knowledge of science fiction television is invaluable.

The politician. On the surface, he’s a big swaggering warlord… but it only takes a glance to realize he’s really just a conniving weasel. He’ll say anything to get ahead, and always manages to wind up in charge because he maneuvers all the smarter people into destroying each other while he remains unscathed. If you start doing too well or - worse yet - become too popular around the office, he orders you to do an impossible task and then blames you when you fail. Or he tries to maneuver you into self-destructing somehow, by giving you contradictory or unrealistic orders.

I really liked this one, for reasons which I probably shouldn’t go into on a publicly accessable blog.

Not content with swiping their saviour from the Greeks, Anglican vicars are now trying to hijack (via) Dr. Who to prop up their creaking mythos.

Let’s get one thing straight. Jesus was a zombie, not a time lord.

You know, for an eight year old elephant, Millenium Dome can be incredibly perceptive:

[W]here some countries spend money just to put flowers on the roundabouts because it makes things just a little bit nicer, in this country we spend money on the BBC and it’s flowers on the roundabouts times a million.

When religious leaders start talking about “religious rights” what they are generally getting at is that they want special exemptions from the sort of normal inquiry that might expose their beliefs for the hot air that they are. No such beating around the bush though for Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor who is demanding that the BBC should suspend its impartiality rules when it comes to religion, and just be biased in favour of Christianity.

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, said: “Cardinal O’Connor speaks like a classic demagogue. His desire to have no contradiction to his message is authoritarian and anti-democratic. Religion already has hours of time of TV and radio in which no-one is allowed to question or comment. Thought for the Day is one such slot, where preachers of all hues are allowed to make blatantly political pitches for religious points of view, and no-one is allowed to interrupt. Mark Thompson’s enthusiasm for the Catholic Church is beginning to suggest that his approach to religion is not entirely balanced or objective. If he listens to the Cardinal, he risks undermining the BBC’s precious heritage of trust as an impartial voice for the whole nation – not just the Church.”

Joss Whedon is one of the better writers working today and I’m more than happy to admit that, when I heard that the creator of Buffy and Firefly had signed up to write Dollhouse – a science fiction series that will star Eliza Dushku - I was more than a little enthused.

Not as enthused, however, as the people behind Dollverse. This – as you may have guessed – is a fan site for Dollhouse, and there is nothing wrong with that. What I do find a bit strange is that this is a fan site for a TV series which not only hasn’t been aired yet, but one which hasn’t even started shooting.

A tad premature, perhaps?