Ooh.

Oh. Great.

Let the truth be known:

25 Years of Christmas No. 1's

1979 Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd
1980 Just Like Starting Over - John Lennon
1981 Don't You Want Me - Human League
1982 Save Your Love For Me - Rene and Renata
1983 Only You - The Flying Pickets
1984 Do They Know It's Christmas - Band Aid
1985 Saving All My Love For You - Witney Houston
1986 Caravan of Love - The Housemartins
1987 Always On My Mind - The Pet Shop Boys
1988 Mistletoe and Wine - Cliff Richard
1989 Do They Know It's Christmas - Band Aid II
1990 Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice
1991 Bohemian Rhapsody / Last Days Of Our Lives - Queen
1992 I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston
1993 Mr Blobby - Mr Blobby
1994 Stay Another Day - East 17
1995 Earth Song - Michael Jackson
1996 2 become 1 - The Spice Girls
1997 Too Much - The Spice Girls
1998 Goodbye - The Spice Girls
1999 Seasons In the Sun / I have a Dream - Westlife
2000 Can We Fix It? - Bob The Builder
2001 Somethin' Stupid - Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman
2002 Sound Of The Undergroud - Girls Aloud
2003 Mad World - Michael Andrews / Gary Jules

Three fucking Spice girls songs IN A ROW. And to I think I thought the inevitable death of popular culture was a recent fact.

Unlerelated note: There's nothing like typing out every year of your life to make you realise that you are too damn old gah death is upon me.

Blimey. Penny Arcarde managed to do two decent strips in a row. Back on form now, though.

The Internet Is Great

Skullcrusher Mountain [Feat. Mp3 download]

Welcome to my secret lair on Skullcrusher Mountain
I hope that you've enjoyed your stay so far
I see you've met my assistant Scarface
His appearance is quite disturbing
But I assure you he's harmless enough
He's a sweetheart, calls me master
And he has a way of finding pretty things and bringing them to me

I'm so into you
But I'm way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I'm crazy
I'm not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You'd see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn't kill you yet

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don't like it
What's with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don't like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

I'm so into you
But I'm way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I'm crazy
I'm not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You'd see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn't kill you yet

Picture the two of us alone inside my golden submarine
While up above the waves my doomsday squad ignites the atmosphere
And all the fools who live their foolish lives may find it quite explosive
But it won't mean half as much to me if I don't have you here

You know it isn't easy living here on Skullcrusher Mountain
Maybe you could cut me just a little slack
Would it kill you to be civil?
I've been patient, I've been gracious
And this mountain is covered with wolves
Hear them howling, my hungry children
Maybe you should stay and have another drink and think about me and you

I'm so into you
But I'm way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I'm crazy
I'm not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You'd see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn't kill you yet
I shouldn't kill you yet
I shouldn't kill you yet

What worries me is that this is going to sit on my hard drive until I attempt to be all modern and use my PC for a jukebox. Then it'll come on during a party and people will think I am very strange indeed.

Learning Can Be Fun

Sing-a-long-a Science. Top pick: Nucleus I Like The Best. The seque from moody acoustic to chemistry rap is really quite something.

Five Sporting Events I Have Witnessed Live

1. International Rugby League
2. Second-division football
3. Monster truck racing
4. County Fencing
5. County Remote-control car racing

Could it be that time again? Why yes, I think so. Put your hands together and your jaw agape for despair-inducing forum post of the week!

"if they are lieng, and I dont want this to sound gayu for all you queer faggots, but if they are lieng im finding them and cutting there god damn sac off"

Thankyou, Nova-Inside.com! I dare not click on the link and see what this incisive intellect mustered for his other 289 posts, but I'm sure you'll make them public in time.

Happy Whatever

Okay, I can understand how it's possible to dedicate an entire shop to birthdays. They're hard to avoid, often expensive, and regularly addressed in the sort of last-minute rush - at least, they are when I'm responding to them. I can't understand, however, how it's possible that it's possible to fill said shop with shitty, shitty cards and a load of emotionally void, officially-licensed crap barely fit for giving to a disliked co-worker. I can't think of anything more likely to detract from your anniversary enjoyment than the knowledge that your pastel-shade, mawkish card and "comedy" T-shirt clad toy monkey came from such a barren place.

My quest having lead me to the exponentially superior but still disappointing shelves of WH Smith hy are there no funny cards any more? The On-The-Ceiling stuff was funny when it first came out which was oh, five years ago. Now it's tired and old and everybody's seen it, a status that its callow pretenders - poorly-Photoshopped animal photos and unfunny digs at knitwear catalogues - achieved almost immediately. I'm sick and tired of those bloody penguins, too. Can't the designers just admit that once everybody's seen your witticism it's time to get a new one, or are they forbidden by the goons of the Hallmark Cartel?

Science: great. As are the New Scientist headline-writers. I'm increasingly fascinated by what a ridiculous animal the platypus is; Gril contends that it's proof of the existence of God, which has a certain Pratchett-esque appeal...

Tech knowledge: Low, red

I suppose this shouldn't come as any surprise at all, but dear God, the Sims 2 community offers some of the most idiotic technical support information known to humanity. Consider this:

"I see alot of people having issues w gameplay etc. I had the same issues such as VERY slow, choppy, and just poor performance in general. As of last night the game runs perfectly and Id like to share the steps I took to achieve this and hope it helps a few people... The 1st thing I did was went out and bought a ATI AGP Radeon 9200 Video Card... Next I bought a AMD Athlon XP 1800+ CPU. That made a VERY Nice improvement, however I found out my motherboard was clocked at 100Mhz NOT 133Mhz. I set the jumper to 133Mhz and WOW!!! Now my PC133 RAM is clocked properley, and with this new Athlon Chip this game is AWESOME!!"

So you bought a new video card and a new processor, and it magically improved performance! Please stop affecting any level of tech-support knowledge now, please.

See? See?!

One of the reasons why I find software development interesting and nobody else does, ever

"During the run-up to Windows XP Service Pack 2 Beta in December of last year, there was a list of five bugs that the release management team decided were so critical that they were going to slip the beta until those bugs got fixed.

The third bug on the list: Deer Hunter 4 won't run."

I like Mr Chen.

Don't fancy yours much

Well, the pay may be low, but at least I can hold down a brief conversation about my job without saying the word "brand" 35 times.

Oh, great. What an utter waste of precious resources.

Wow. Virtual schizophrenia in Second Life.

Tax dollars at work

You absolute fucker.

(via Cardhouse)

Ace: mentally unstable toy therapy.

Something I feel compelled to note: I contributed to Defective Yeti's Tricks of the Trade piece, and was actually included. As the "auto mechanic", no less. Fame! No doubt inspired by my devastatingly illuminating contribution, he's now turned it into a website and (predictably) a potential book. More power to him, say I. Please do swing by and contribute; I'd add some more but I think it would probably dangerous to start making comments about jobs I still hold in some form.

Well, y'see, it really does look like shit. I am aware of the slavish devotion to style that informs this, but slavish adulation something that looks like a really cheap, crappy, Taiwanese monitor isn't that cool.

The cognitive dissonance is really quite fascinating, though.