Dear World

For the love of God, please shut up about the iPod. It is indeed very pretty, very useful and a wonderful piece of consumer technology but it is also very expensive, largely devoid of real technological innovation, and everybody has got one. There are thousands of bloody digital music players in existence - there is absolutely no need to keep harping on about this one and the sheer weight of idiots giving Apple yet more slavish, witless and largely uninformed free advertising is starting to drive me insane. Yes, it's great, no, it's not exciting, and no I don't want see another bloody article that somehow didn't find room to mention the dozens of other devices on the market in between the exhaustive fellatio of Steve fucking Jobs. HE IS MERELY FLESH AND BLOOD and it is MERELY WHITE PLASTIC. Moses had a space on one of his stone slabs for this sort of behaviour, you know.

Trucker concocts superbug killing cream in his garage Brilliant.

Honesty in Advertising

"If I was a regular reader, I would want the ease of the ads being gone, and the archives in a nice little place right there," Kolb said. "And if they don't, fuck 'em."

One Day, I Will Make My Own Entertaining Content

Until then, I shall merely link to other, more entertaining people instead. And change my Yahoo Messenger status to "innocent"

Bibliomancy

The key here is choosing the right book. I tried it with Hop on Pop and my fortune is apparently "Eat a snack." Eerily accurate, if not precisely earth-shaking. Bad books for bibliomancy include Carrie, Left Behind, and the collected works of Hunter S. Thompson.

Busted

Well, I guess that'll teach me to include links. Goddamn server referrals.

Lullabies For The Uncomprehending

Lullaby
And goodnight
La la blah blah
Blah something
I think this song
Is in German
Eins zwei drei vier funf
Bratwurst

Girls gone wild
Where's the beef?
I've got Pacman fever
Four score and
Seven years
Bingo was his name-oh.

...No, for real
Go to sleep
Or we'll sell you
On E-bay ...

On a more worrying note, there now exists a book that consists of nothing but premium-cut blog entries. I expect it will be bought by bloggers in their thousands who will then point at it's sales success as Irrefutable Proof That Blogging Is The Future Of Media, seemingly in a totally irony-free fashion.

ADD

Damn it. I got all fired up last week about the end of the world and how we're all going to be living in oil-starved anarchy within the next 20 years, and then I do absolutely nothing about it, let it slip out of my mind care of that charming cognitive-dissonance trick I do so well, and now I log on again to bitch about this week's cause celebre: everybody else is in the World of Warcraft beta and I'm not. God, I'm shallow.

Well, that's that then

It would appear that we're all totally fucked. Utterly and completely, grow-your-own veg time. Hooray.

All things in moderation

Best forum moderation ever (I paraphrase):

"I suppose so. Now just fuck off and let me do some work. If you don't stop this petty whinging I'm going to ban you. Permanently. Seriously. And if you don't leave me alone I'm going to come down the phone line and rape your sister."

Oh, it's beautiful.

Just in case he deletes it again:: "Some days I really wonder if the Videogame industry deserves to live or should just curl up in a ball and die, lie ignored for a decade or so and then let someone else have a crack at resurrecting the concept."

Top newsboard headline from the non-more-small town rag that serves the greater Bath area:

"Spa fiasco - everybody blamed"

That should draw a line under everything, then. God bless the press.

"Porneoke" had a good few months, during which Hal Robins memorably performed "Monster Mash" in front of a tape of fornicating dwarfs. What a very strange place San Francisco is. I must visit.

EDIT: Holy shit, this dude did the voices for Half-Life too. That's pretty unexpected.

A very odd obituary

Kieron likes music workblog: "The Commies – and if there were ever a band who really shouldn’t be referred to by a diminution of their name it’s these serious Oxford Ex-student types – dominated the spring, only to make a return as the seasons turned in winter. I ended up distributing it to Jim and Walker towards the close and had the following conversation about Holomovement…

Jim: very good
Kieron: I used to walk listening to that on the walk from my Oldfield Park flat and work.
Kieron: It turned the world into clockwork
Jim: no wonder you were spaceman in the mornings
Kieron: Yeah
Kieron: And on the way back from the pub it did similar tricks.
Kieron: The dark clouds run their fingers along the sky's thighs
Kieron: The amber streetlights stand guard on the roads frontiers.
Kieron: I cross their borders, feeling the car's wakes slide past me.
Jim: that means you are gay"

Finally, some decent repurposed content:

Communists Now Least Threatening Group In U.S.
WASHINGTON, DC—According to a report released Tuesday by the Pentagon, Communists rank last on a list of 238 threats to national security. "Communists may now safely be ignored," Secretary of Defense William Cohen said. "The Red Menace has been surpassed by militia groups, religious extremists, ecoterrorists, cybercriminals, Hollywood producers, and angry drivers." Other groups deemed more threatening than Communists include rap-metal bands (#96), escaped zoo animals (#202), and Belgians (#237).

Heh. Belgians.

State makes with the funny:

"Computer? We used to DREAM of having a computer.

We 'ad an abacus made out of some old knitting needles and grandad's teeth, and our dad would put a bit of blue paper in front of it every twenty minutes and then kill one of us, so's we'd think we 'ad a proper Blue Screen of Death, like."

Some Observations From A Brief Sojurn To The Former Colonies, presented in Chronological Order in the Fashion of the Day

Why in God's name don't they let people check in early? There's nothing to do here apart from drink overpriced coffee and dull-eyed people shuffle around - let me through into the hall of wonders beyond the check-in desk, where there's a few decent shops and some comfortable seating.

You know, I don't want to ever get used to seeing people walking around with submachine guns.

Why are Pret A Manger so cheap? They don't taste cheap. Is it a placebo?

TV tells me there are a million enthralling human-interest stories surrounding me at the moment. I'd settle for seeing someone with amusing luggage.

Why yes, that is my teenage self in the passport photo. Indeed, it is highly amusing. How I laughed through those years of pubescent angst.

Goddam Microsoft have spoiled me for air travel. I want Club World, not World Pauper. Window seat might be nice though.

You know, I wouldn't actually travel if I had a cough like that. Much less sit next to innocent, undiseased people who are then trapped next to the cold, unventilating window.

Okay, I'd really like it if you stopped coughing now.

PUT YOUR HAND OVER YOUR MOUTH, YOU INCONSIDERATE BITCH

Why am I watching Bad Boys II? What defect in my personality prompts me to do these things?

Hah! You stopped coughing! You stopped coughing while watching Love Actually! It's psychosomatic! I knew it! I'll kill you!

This stuff doesn't taste nearly as bad as it's made out to.

Yes, that's it, keep coughing. I hope you bring up a lung, millimetre by agonising weedy, yapping, millimetre.

Terminator 4 is a very bad film. I should write to Hollywood and explain that one spectacular car chase doesn't make up for vapid acting, appalling lazy use of established stereotypes and plots that don't even stick to their own reality.

Tell you what, don't bother landing, just dump the damn thing on the runway and let it skid into the terminal. I'm sure those fillings I'm currently swallowing weren't doing much anyway.

Place of address? Shit. Er... shit... er - oh, hold on, they can't check. 34 Maple Drive, yessir, that's where I'm staying. Heh.

Yay, airport welcome.

God, this looks like Nightmare on Elm Street. Surely there can't be anywhere this wholesome?

Basement rec room. Never thought I'd see th- Jesus, that's an enormous TV.


Well, that spun out a little more than I was expecting. Maybe I'll finish it later.

New spectator sport: the sheer, horrible desperation of the music business. I don't like parasitic posting, but I agree with this so wholeheartedly I feel I must record it.

Tee hee. The Washington Post reviewer must be feeling in a pretty lonely place at the moment - specifically, in the director's family. It's only a shame that most of the reviews require registration to read...