You’d run around like a madman either (a) trying to avoid whoever had the jobbie touch, or (b) trying to touch someone so you’d be free of the imaginary infection leaving your unwilling victim to take your place.

Well this is the cyber equivalent of it. It appears I’ve been tagged by my old mate Neil McIntosh over at Complete Tosh, who was himself tagged by James Gordon-Macintosh.

So as not to appear rude, which isn’t a New Year’s resolution, I have submitted my own paltry offerings to the meme, and hope that those I’ve in turn tagged at the end may decide to do the same to keep this convoy of content a truckin’.

What I’ve Read

The Ecologist which contained an interesting article about allegedly The First Global Warming Refugee on the planet written by Dan McDougall on the plight of islanders of the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal.

I also managed to pick up a copy of The Angry Corrie – the original Scottish hillwalking fanzine, just because its fun, but not quite as much fun as the bumper Christmas issue of Private Eye which is something or required reading in these parts.

New Scientist was also on the pile and I confess to buying the lastest edition of Tatler not to ogle at Mischa Barton, but for the free Best 101 Hotels in the World supplement for which I am a constant sucker in unabated my wanderlust.

The Guardian found its way into the house so we could do the quizzes and wouldn’t be caught out should Mr & Mrs Tosh drop by unexpectedly, as did the Daily Record after I spotted this splash and spread which looks suspiciously based on a tip I gave them a couple of weeks prior.

And not forgetting, the Ayrshire Post our local paper, so we could find a Midnight Mass to ignore.

What I’ve Watched

Frankly we didn’t watch much TV in Milne Towers this Christmas, well, not live stuff anyway. There was little to tempt us, other than having Sky News on in the background and any live football on the box.

Instead we used the time constructively to plough through the hours of telly stored up in our Sky Plus box, which included in no particular order, the hilarious Californication, the final Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, the never as good as series one Spooks, NCIS, laughed a lot at Never Mind the Buzzcocks and tormented our poor illiterate souls with hours of University Challenge.

What I’ve listened to.

The iPod has been in overdrive mostly, The Jazz Plays Christmas among the seasonal treats sandwiched between Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse and the peculiar yet enjoyable soundtrack to Lost In Translation among others.

Trannie wise its been Radio Scotland for the Hearts games I decided not to go to on account of my team being keek at the moment, the Guardian’s footie Podcasts in a vain attempt to keep up with my wife’s ridiculously honed knowledge of the game in Engerland and Paul Gambaccini on Radio 2 for his 90 minutes of greatest hits from America over the past five decades.

I also caught and enjoyed most of Radio 2’s Christmas Tale narrated by Christian Slater which made a dark, rain soaked night driving flash by.

What I’ve Surfed

I’ve not completely given up on the Jambos, so the official Hearts site, fans forums Jambos Kickback and Boys in Maroon and the Edinburgh Evening News website complete with terrible redesign were frequent hits.

Curry’s electrical was a surprise choice thanks to the fridge freezer packing in just before we hosted Chritsmas ane New Year dinners, but that doesn’t count really, does it, until you include the reviews we went through in our hunt for a new model.

The BBC, Sky, most newspaper sites, other blogs most of which are listed on my own, Facebook and so on were randomly interrogated.

But the big thrill was logging into the Star Wars website to catch all the updates on the soon to be released next Indian Jones film.

Woo hoo, indeed.

Now, pass me the remote control….and let Scott Douglas, Stephen Rafferty and Bob Mitchell join in the fun.

It’s quite to the point and in many ways is easier to relate to. Season 4 is all about education and may resonate with your brother but he would need to watch seasons 1 and 3 at least to get the emotional depression and slaughter hit from it.

It very much is the American Novel as Television (© pretentious people) with Season 1 very much the intro to what comes later. (Thirteen hours of viewing as a starting point – how’s that for a delayed drop intro That’s up there with the 1000 page long manga’s that title themselves as the prelude)

24 doesn’t work for me as well on DVD. I raved about the first two seasons as I thought that they were one of the best examples of episodic television done correctly with old fashioned cliffhangers that made you want to run off to BBC 3 or torrent sites to find out what happened next. Season 5 was a return to glory for that, but that “I need to know what happens next NOW” feeling is vastly diminished on DVD as that next episode fix is very much sitting there.

Having said that, The Wire works better on DVD because all the episodes are there just like all the chapters of a book are there.

And now off to do the meme…

And you are quite right, the Christmas television was quite abominably poor this year – barely a thing to redeem it.