Here’s a life-lesson I picked up recently while watching 97 solid hours of Columbo [1]:
Never - I repeat, never - blackmail a murderer.
I would have thought this was just common sense - but it’s surprising how many characters in Columbo episodes make the mistake of overlooking the fact that the bad person has already killed at least one victim, and has all the motivation in the world to keep adding bodies to the growing pile of corpses he or she is keeping down in the basement.
So, Columbo Rule Number 1 is:
Realizing your boss / lover / nextdoor neighbor / golf instructor / pool guy has murdered his or her rival / secretary / gynecologist / sibling / graduating class, is not an opportunity to renegotiate your contract / living arrangements / retirement plan. In fact, it’s a great opportunity to learn how to keep your fool mouth shut if you want to live to see the end of the episode.
Stay tuned for Columbo Rule Number 2: “The More Confused And Absent-Minded The Investigating Officer Appears, The More You Should Be Thinking About Getting Your Ass To A Country That Doesn’t Have Extradition Arrangements, And Pronto”.
Footnotes:
| 1. | As a direct result of having recently purchased Season 3 of the series on DVD |
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Good to see you back Murray, dropped in on PT on an off chance and was glad to see you back. Totally loving the banter here and think you’re both doing great stuff. Keep it up! Jacki
Hi Jacki!
Glad to see you dropped by Voodoo Logic, and also that you’re enjoying what you’ve encountered thus far!
Hopefully Voodoo Logic will be updated much more frequently than PlanetThoughtful has been for many months. Well, it will be if Darren Saturday receives any more emails he can plagiarise.
Much warmth,
Murray
Plagiarise? Whoooa, steady on there Midnight.
I’m not quite sure what your peculiar take on plagiarism is but there is no doubt that you are very seriously mistaken on this occasion as a very open and transparent citation of the source content was clearly made.
Knuckle.
************
Homework for Midnight:
Plagiarism is the practice of claiming, or implying, original authorship, or incorporating material from someone else’s written or creative work in whole or in part, into ones own, without adequate acknowledgment.
The written or creative work which is plagiarized may be a book, article, musical score, film script, or other work. Unlike cases of forgery, in which the authenticity of the writing, document, or some other kind of object, itself is in question, plagiarism is concerned with the issue of FALSE attribution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
A citation or bibliographic citation is a reference to a book, article, web page, or other published item with sufficient details uniquely to identify the item. Unpublished writings or speech, such as working papers or personal communications, are also sometimes cited.
Citations may be made in the body of text as parenthetical citations, in footnotes at the bottom of pages, or in endnotes at the end of the document.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation
Um. I think you meant to post this comment over on the Twenty20 thread, right?
Oh, and “Yo Mamma!” as well.
There’s a certain nostalgia I admit in watching Columbo. The same nostalgia one gets from the infrequent watching of an episode of The Rockford Files or Hawaii Five-O. They instantly transport us to the days of flared pants, bad haircuts, and times when crime was actually far less ‘dangerous’ than it is today, and more how shall I say it - entertaining?
That gave way to shows like Hill Street Blues that claimed to be showing the ‘real’ story from the streets themselves, followed by the legal melodramas that are Law and Order, crime for the discerning taste and the latte set.
Now of course we have CSI to rival the past unrealistic shows. Sure the science is interesting but the writing unfortunatey hasn’t improved that much.
My vote for realism is The First 48. It certainly beats Cops, you know, that show that’s basically a cross between Funniest Home Videos, World’s Most Dangerous Morons on Video and the latest reality show. It used to be edgy, now it’s just sad. Why don’t we see real crimes in it any more? Perhaps the Rodney King incident scared the crap out of the Cops too much.
Columbo? Yeah he’s quite odd really, like that pervy old uncle we all have. Maybe it’s the raincoat thing. I think TV execs need to take a long hard look at television back-catalogs and finally consign some of them to the furnace. Maybe you Voodoo Boyz could do a spiel on what you think needs to be tossed.
I’d start with Hogan’s Heroes, Murder She Wrote and The Dukes of Hazzard. For craps sake everyone knows a Boss Hog is a really cool Harley.