Tomorrow, a book....

2008-01-11T12:33:00.000Z

Well, answers to questions as follows:

1. From what Google-found info I've managed to squeeze into my tiny realm of understanding, you would indeed accelerate to the centre of the Earth. The momentum would then carry you up to the surface on the other side of the Earth (assuming, presuambly, that the diameter of the core to surface is the same on both sides of the globe) and you could step out onto Ozzie soil.

2. Language arrived for humans, which is better than plumage or size of air-sac for determining your future partner.

Xmas was good, New Years was really good (Eve that is. Actual day was spent in bed vomiting bile and crying with alchohol poisoning). Birthday was very good - went to www.ysp.co.uk to see the Andrew Goldsworthy exhibition and then into Leeds for shopping and dinner at 1920's themed Italian restaurant, Bibi's. Where Toby found a MontBlanc pen shoved down the back of one of the couches. It was only when we got home that I realised that it was a £170 pen. Now I have the dilemma that I should really call them to ask if anyone's reported a lost pen...

2007-11-27T14:36:00.000Z

Oh the grand old Thom of Yorke, he found a great rock band
He marched them up to the top of the charts and he marched them down again
And when they were up they were up
And when they were down they were down
And when they were only half way up they were still the most innovative and influential rock band in the world.

Loving In Rainbows to tiny little coruscating bits :)

2007-11-26T17:15:00.000Z

You knew this already; mute swans can't honk or squawk. Which is possibly how they developed such huge flapping wings - for getting other swan's attention.

Swan 1 thinks: [there's a crocodile!] FLAP! FLAP! FLAP!
Swan 2 thinks: [what's his probl...]
Crocodile: [crunch] Idiots

But, the powerful wing is certainly much more effective at keeping small chidren at bay. A kind of variation on the maxim, "speak softly and carry a big stick". ie. don't speak at all, but break a childs arm if he tries to lob a stale roll at your head.

Couple of co-incidences to kick things off, then a couple of questions which I might have a stab at answering later in the week. Note to self, if you're going to ask yourself a question, make sure you already know the answer or you'll appear disorganised. Further note to self, don't write notes to self in plain view of anyone not "self".

It's just a co-incidence 1:

Just finished reading Joseph O'Connors excellent Star of the Sea and I had earmarked Fast Food Nation as the next to be devoured. Went to Wallingford on Saturday and had a look in Sue Ryder at the books. Star of the Sea and Fast Food Nation were sat right next to each other on the top shelf. Sp-oo-oo-k.

It's just a co-incidence 2:

On Sunday I hit the Olympia Record Fair with a serious thirst for dusty vinyl (which seems a bit of an oxymoron), while Sarah and la familie went to the British Museum. Id asked Sarah to look out Albrecht Durer's rhinoceros woodcut print that I had read about in Mario Livio's book on the Golden Ratio, as I wanted to know how impressive it looked. When I got home that evening I decided that Fast Food Nation was a jump too far away from my current literary era (Dostoyevsky, Euclid, 19th Century Ireland etc), so I put it back and took out a Penguin collection of short stories by Guy de Maupassant. Looking for an indication of what the stories were about I flicked to the back page and found a diagram of....Albrecht Durer's rhinoceros woodcut print.Sp-ii-ii-ke.

OK, so:

Q1 - if you drilled a hole al the way through the Earth and out the other side, put on a protective suit impervious to everything, and then jumped in, what would happen? When you go to the centre of the Earth would you just stop? Because I can't imagine you flying out the other end, which in Australia would mean that you fell up a hole!

Q2 - in nature (red in tooth and claw and dangly bit under a turkey's neck), why is it the males that are colourful and make all the attempt to woo the females? Whereas in the human world (red in sunburn and tarty lipstick), on the whole, it's the females that, excuse the expression, go the whole hog and preen to attract the males. What happened?

OK, no guarantee of updates then; I might just fall again back into the blog-slumber I've been in for the past year or so and not return.

Music in my mind - Radiohead, Flying Lotus, A Mountain of One, Burial, BT

2007-03-06T10:08:00.000Z

(This was written ages ago, but not posted)

My brain has not come out of hibernation from the Xmas period, despite many temptations. This was demonstrated last Thursday when we had a power cut at work. All the drinks machines were off and I wanted a cup of tea, damn. "Hang I though", I had a revelation, "I know someone that's got a kettle!".

Yes it has been a bit quiet on the blog. I have been secretly plotting the overthrow of the UK's theocracy, building my arsenal, honing my skills, amassing and galvanising my comrades in arms etc etc. More news on this as it comes.

"Taaa-aake a Break. It's fun to stay at the Taaa-aake a Bray-ey-ake". It goes something like that anyway. You haven't seen it? OK, so let me paint the luridly incongruous picture for you. The advertising simpletons charged with promoting the TV guide-cum-gossip mag, Take-a-Break, have come up with a TV ad featuring the Village People (lookalikes) dancing like gaydons in a school canteen to a molested cover version of YMCA. "Taaa-aake a Break. It's fun to bum at the Taaa-aake a Bray-ey-ake".

The concept doesn't make sense really, but luckily for the Village People (lookalikes) reality has been put on pause for 45 seconds and the dinner ladies are up for a bit of synchronised homosexual dancing disrupting their busiest time of the day. And the kids don't seem to mind either, which is even stranger. These kids are not at all typical of your usual secondary school chav-hoodies, text-bullying each other and throwing poison tipped flick knives at anyone in authority. No, completely the opposite in fact, they love the camp Red Indian (political correctness has no authority here) and the sinister, sunglassed, suntanned construction worker and even the police officer! (now we really are in the land of make believe). A mere 10 seconds into their song and dance routine and the kids are up there with the old biddies thrusting away before you can say Section 28.

It's a lazy kind of lowest common denominator attempt to appeal to the gossip rag's demographic and it won't mean anything to most of the UK population. Dinner lady types, however, like hunky men, even if they're gay apparently, so it goes down a storm and as a result they've found no better gay disco icon endorsed TV guide with which to pass the time. Dinner hags are happy, kids are happy, Village People are happy (well, they're gay, so by definition...), Take a Break execs are happy. Possibly. So, everyone's a winner babe. Oh no, that was the other lot wasn't it?

The Oxford Secularists meet at the Old Tom this Thursday by the way. You haven't heard of them? Oh, well, they're all over the net don't you know.

Actually I forgot. Toby had a mad co-incidence the other day. After supper he was allowed a Tunnock's Tea Cake (oh yes, the king of tea cakes. Also called a Mace Windu in our house after Samuel Jackson's character in the Star Wars films)

After he'd finished it he went into the sitting room and about 1 minute later returned with my Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit Down book (check out their purple Digestive photo), opened at the page talking about the Tunnock's Tea Cake. "Look what I found" he said. Now this was quite odd as he has never been shown that book. It does have a very small picture of a jammy dodger, a round shortcake and a smiley face on the spine, but I don't know why he'd pick that book from the book case and flick through it to find the tea cake section. Anyway, it's almost certainly the work of some baked goods deity and so I should definitely follow the rules and regulations of the NCOTAASD book without question and murder anyone that disagrees with anything in it. Right? [Note to the humourless religious types: that is called sarcasm.]

Toby also saw a TV advert for Disneyland Paris that had the voiceover tagline of, "Where dreams come true". "I definitely don't want to go there!" he piped up. "I had a dream where a monster was trying to kill me and if I go there it will come true!". I think he was confusing the report that Tigger had tried to punch a kid at one of the Disneylands.

Also, last year at a friend's birthday party, the kids were tying wishes to balloons and letting them go in the back garden. Toby wrote his in secret (with Mum) and fifteen minutes later was in floods of tears. His wish to become a green Power Ranger hadn't come true. For days afterwards he kept saying, "I still haven't turned into a green Power Ranger dad".

I know it's nice to go, "Aaaah, sweet", but for him at the age of 4 and a half these type of things are quite traumatic and I'd prefer to just be honest with him. Better to have a shower of honest tears and clear the air than to foment a brooding thunderstorm of deception eh? What?!

2007-01-24T13:44:00.000Z

Hey, you know how I've been working on getting my brain into gear this year? Well, I got a Nintendo DS with Dr Nagasaki's Brain Training, I've been following The Independent's Train Your Brain in 7 Days program, have promised to start production on my creative inspirations and I've been reading numerous books on thought processes, ethics, atheism, philosophy etc etc blahdi blahdi blah. Well I'm very pleased to report that it has really paid off. Today when I went to the toilet I discovered that I had put my pants on back to front this morning. 36 years old. Pants on back to front. Even Toby manages to get his pants on the right way round, most of the time, and he's 4.

What's more annoying is that my boots are such a massive pain in the arse to take off that I can't be bothered to get undressed in the toilet cubicle at work and so I'll probably have to wait until I get home to switch my pants round the right way. Now when I sit down I feel like the lower half of body is facing in the opposite direction to my head and torso. It is very confusing.

2007-01-09T20:23:00.000Z

Nice break? Yes me too.

One little observation I made over the Winter Solstice (Christmas to you), was the prevalently incorrect usage of the word "literally" in common parlance. For example, a taxi driver on the telly who was commenting on a lack of heating in his cab, remarked "I'm literally freezing my nuts off here!".

Now, for this statement to be true, his testicles (test-icicles?) would need to have frozen solid and then been snapped from their glass-like vans deferens, broken through his brittle scrotum and rolled down his trouser legs out onto his shoes. I don't think that actually happened however, as he appeared far too calm and collected for one to have suffered such an icy castration. Maybe the shock really set in when he started to thaw out though. Ouch.

Another example, which I forget the origins of, was a man who exclaimed that he could, "literally eat a horse". Really? I think even a baby Shetland pony would probably be too much for even the hungriest of gluttons.

This is the incorrect use of the word "literally" when what it should really be used for is to clarify and state that the metaphor in question is actually true to itself. e.g homeowners living under the approach path to Heathrow, who often experience the brief, warm shower that accompanies the onboard sewage tanks being purged on landing, would be quite correct to state that it's, "literally pissing down".

Interestingly, those who often comment, "I literally haven't got a clue" are making an incorrect statement of another sort. Quite often the fact isn't that they don't have a clue, it's that they literally don't have any idea what the answer might be. They have plenty of clues, just not any ideas. I've just realised that I may have plagiarised this idea from Russell Brand. They're all my own words though!

Now, bed wetting nail bombers. It cheers me greatly to watch the type of program I saw last night on BBC1. The kind of documentary based on some murderous lowlife who is caught, imprisoned and then psychoanalysed as being a bedwetting mummy's boy. The London nail bomber who detonated devices in Brick Lane (aimed at Asians), Brixton (aimed at Blacks) and the Admiral Duncan pub (aimed at homosexuals) was described by his psychiatrist as,"someone with very poor hygiene", "an inconfident, weak and bullied child", "a bed wetter" and a "possible closet homosexual". I just hope that he was watching the program in prison with hoards of rough blokes laughing themselves stupid at this description of him. Small punishment, but it probably had more of an impression on him than the 6 life sentences he got for carrying out the horrendous attacks that he simply described as his, "duty".

Incontinent twat.

2006-12-11T22:21:00.000Z

I had to go and watch the little boy in his first nativity play last Thursday. As a newly hardened atheist this was a fairly interesting experience. Having immersed myself in atheist literature, podcasts and watched countless movie files of lectures, debates and documentaries it was a real slap across the face to hear 70 young children singing, “Hallelujah to the Lord above” with all their hearts :-/

I had to flick my V’s at a Methodist church on the way home to make myself feel better.

One kid left the stage about halfway through with a teacher holding a box of tissues. I say “kid” in both senses of the word, as he was a boy playing a small goat (!). I didn’t really give that much thought to it, until the head teacher at the very end of the play revealed cryptically that the youngster had obviously got stage fright and had to leave. He shuffled onto the stage so he could get the chance to actually say his lines in the play. “Why would a king be born in a stable?” he sniffed, but this was after it had all finished and it just sounded stupid. How embarrassing for him; poor kid standing there in hisrubbish goat hat and white tights. I’d have preferred to get changed and just go home and excuse myself with a claim of partial amnesia or mild Ebola or something.

All in all I saw Toby for approximately 30 seconds at the very end of the performance. It was with literally about 5 minutes to go when I suddenly got a cold chill of realisation that I hadn’t actually seen him on stage or on the floor at all. I was thinking, “What if he’s been abducted? What if I’ve been standing here for 50 minutes like an idiot watching other people’s children fluff their lines and sing like castrated mice in a p*ss poor Nativity when he was actually abducted right at the very beginning and is now on a cargo freighter steaming towards North Africa?!”. Anyway, I saw him finally when he went up to take a bow for whatever it was that he did in the play. I have no idea.

Check this Jesus Christ action figure out.

Or, even better, OCD action figure!

2006-12-05T16:13:00.000Z

Cliff! Was in the news just recently as he and Jethro Tull were campaigning to get the copyright laws on recorded material extended from 50 years to 95. His early recordings from 1958 will become public domain in 2008, to those that want them, and he's been bellyaching about it, quite rightly I suppose. He will after all lose all control over the recordings and more importantly he won't get a bean in royalties from anyone that plays them after that date. I wanted to find out what he had to say about the ruling specifically (to be honest I knew he would be a whinger and I just wanted to have a laugh at his expense) and so I went to his website to have a look at the News and Forum pages and, ooh what's this? A Blog.

To get into the inner world of Sir Clifford of Rich and his loyal fans I had to register on the website and today I received my first update e-mail from Jesus' favourite leather faced tennis partner and it opened thus :

"Cliff isn’t just known for his musical successes (no, he's also known as a closet homosexual, Bible-bashing, Botox zombie too) - but also the fragrances his hits inspired, which have become bestsellers, worn by his legions of (undead) fans and by fragrance-lovers who just love the perfumes themselves (as opposed to the fans who only wear his perfume because it's Cliff's): Miss You Nights, Devil Woman and Dream Maker".

OK, so he's got three fragrances:

1. "Miss You Nights - warm and floriental, with its heady notes of ylang-ylang, rose and jasmine (which remind Cliff of his home [read - tax haven] in Barbados)"

2. "Dream Maker - opens with a zing of citrus notes, which give way to a floral heart – inspired by the sweet-smelling flowers Cliff grows in his own garden [the grannies swoon], and with spicy, woody undertones"

3. "And Devil Woman – Cliff’s latest creation – evokes a heady sensuality, with a fruity note of cassis, and exotic ingredients from faraway lands: musk, precious woods, Madagascan vanilla and benzoin resin [what?!], from Indonesia"

I think those are quite weak names actually for the perfumes. They are obviously taken from his hits of the same name, but I think he had a whole raft of other song name possibilities to choose from that would have more obviously conveyed the type of fragrance they lent their name too. Here are some of my suggestions, all using Cliff's original hit song titles:

1. Summer Holiday - coconut, pineapple, cut grass and summer rain
2. Evergreen Tree - err, an evergreen tree
3. Dancing Shoes - foot odour and sweaty socks
4. Spanish Harlem - roses, blood, whisky and garbage
5. Bachelor Boy - BO, stale clothes, beer and fags
6. Chinchilla - damp fur, carrots and pee
7. Yugoslav Wedding (my favourite) - vodka, horse manure and cabbages
8. Jerusalem - petrol, gunpowder and myrrh
9. House Without Windows - rising damp, pigeon shit and tramps urine, and...
10. Willie and the Hand Jive - I don't think I want to investigate what that would smell like actually...

I think there's money to be made there. Obviously some perfumes would cater to a rather specialist market, but that's what Cliff does now isn't it?

Finally, I went to get a Dr Pepper from the vending machine yesterday and noticed an 8" x 12" sign on the front of the machine which just said, "Thirsty?". Um, yep. That's usually my motivation for buying a drink. What next, a sign on the lavatory door asking, "Need a wee?".

And I've just discovered that a little bit of Flora makes a good lip salve improvisation and it contains sunflower goodness and essential polyunsaturates for a healthy heart. Bonusk.

2006-12-01T16:41:00.000Z

Hey kiddywinks, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s December and the blackboard outside one of my local pubs reads, “Santa sez – drink early for Xmas!”. So obviously drink early, but please also remember to leave Christ out of Christmas from now on. We’re celebrating Xmas these days – and the bible bashers agree :0)

Every time I see starlings now I think of that Carling “Belong” advert with the Hard Fi soundtrack (“Living for the Weekend”). It’s quite a clever ad and I love those swirling clouds the birds make. It makes me want to listen to the CD. But…it doesn’t make me want to drink Carling Black Label. I don’t think even a throat full of hot sand would make me want to drink Carling Black Label. Also, I think they missed a trick there and could have blended the swirling cloud of birds into bubbles in a glass of Carling being poured out. And, all it finishes with is the word “Belong”. If you don’t recognise the red, black and white branding of the wording then you don’t recognise the product either and it ends up looking like just a clever TV ident.

themightychew – 3, Marketing coke heads – 1.

What’s funny though is how I’m, mostly, impervious to adverts, but not to trailers for crap films. The latest trailer for the new Miami Vice film (which I’m guessing is going to be crap) has the Linkin Park\Jay-Z tune “Numb\Encore” running through it. I love the track and straight away I’m interested and thinking, “Yeah, I’ll get that DVD out, yeah that’ll be really good!”. Then I know I’ll watch it to the point where they play the Numb tune and that’ll be it, film over. I did that with the absolute bag of shite film In&Out (6 out of 10 on IMDB?!!). There was one scene in the trailer where Kevin Kline’s character, who is trying to prove he’s not gay, says, “I ran into him at the homo-section, I mean the inter-sexual!!”. It stil makes me laugh now. But all I have to do is think about the rest of the film and that smile quickly evaporates. Such. A. Pile. Of. Crud. The trailer sucked me in, but the actual film is the only one that I have ever walked out of the cinema from.

“Who dear me dear gay dear? No dear! How VERY dare you!!”

Whilst looking for a pic of Derek Faye (Catherine Tate’s 'gay man in denial' character), I found this horrible 'right-on' Christian poster that has tried to piggy back onto popular culture to get Christ’s message to 'the kidz'.

Erm, do they know that the character they’re quoting is gay and that the reason he’s refusing to accept his gayness is because of the feared persecution and stigma that often then follows? The kind of persecution conducted so viciously by these very same religious types....

themightychew – 1, sad religious types - 0

2006-11-29T11:13:00.000Z

Hey, check me out; the blog had some ‘technical difficulties’. No, that’s not an Israeli army euphemism for my blog slaughtering scores of innocent Palestinian children. No, my blog home page simply went blank. As blank as a Creationist's science book. If you logged in looking for updates (ahem, yeah right) and found a blank page instead, then that’s why. Sos.

Today I nearly scalded myself quite badly trying to teach an insolent Asian a lesson in manners, which completely backfired. There's a girl\woman\female at work I see fairly regularly around the office and who has a striking absence of courtesy. I don’t think I have ever heard her say please or thank you to anyone. She hardly acknowledges the presence of anyone around her, she pushes into queues, she will barge her way off a bus in front of the other, patiently waiting passengers, she asks for stuff from the canteen with no civility, no “please can I have?” or “thanks very much”: she’s horrible.

The main thing she does that aggravates me is stalk around with her arms folded and stride through doors being held open for her with absolutely no “thanks” and no acknowledgment of the person holding the door for her. She will also, happily it seems, let a door close behind her with no attempt whatsoever to hold it if there are people following.

So, after holding doors open for her a number of times myself and being blankly ignored (like it was my job to hold doors open specifically for her) I decided that the next time I came to be going through a door in front of her, I would skim through the smallest crack and make no attempt to prop it open for her. So, I just came back from the canteen with a large cup of tea and noticed that she was walking my way back into the office. The door was already closing and seizing my opportunity to let the door close in her face I tried to quickly scoot through the diminishing aperture. What I actually managed to do was catch the sleeve of my sweatshirt on the handle, stumble and kick the door loudly enough for people to look up at me and then tip half a cup of boiling tea partly down my leg. Still, she did have to unfold her arrogant arms to open the door herself, so that taught her a lesson. I think. My leg hurts.

Back to the main theme, it would seem, of this blog – co-incidence. I’m interested more in these co-incidences now from the angle that some more impressionable people would read into them more than I do, even though I'm the one that the co-incidences are happening to. What I mean to say is that some folk with a supernatural, superstitious and religious bent would be seeing the work of a higher force at work here. Possibly.

1. Sarah and I watched ‘The Root of all Evil’ last week and in the final interview Richard Dawkins is speaking to the Archbishop of Oxford in the cemetery of a small, possibly local (to Oxford) church. In the background is a dual carriageway and I wondered out loud if it was the A34 and the church in that case would be in Botley. I took Toby to music class the following morning and as drove back home I took a wrong turn in Headington. I had my bearings roughly and decided to follow the road back to the ring road. I came to a small T-junction amongst some houses with The Black Boy pub on my right. I looked left before puling out and lo and behold, there was the church from The Root of Evil with the A40 dual carriegeway in the background. It’s in Barton by the way. Spook!

2. I was posting in the Superfuture.Superdenim forum about the dangers of buying (fake) PRPS jeans from eBay and made the statement that I didn’t want others to make the same mistakes as me. I posted, “I’m very altruistic like that”. Approximately 5 seconds later Sarah called me from the car to tell me that Richard Dawkins was on Radio 4's 'In Our Time' talking about altruism. Double spook!!

3. [Not a co-incidence as such]

I bought a McDonalds breakfast on Sunday and as I was waiting for my yummy pancakes and syrup I considered the charity box on the counter. I’ve seen them, but never paid attention to what they are actually collecting for. The money collected goes towards McDonalds’ own foundation to help families with children in hospitals that are not local to them by finding or providing low cost or free accommodation. This seemed noble enough and, as I have been paying particular attention to the level of charity work undertaken by religious organisations and the criticism of atheists and their, alleged, lack of charity I decided to donate my 98p change. I didn’t really get a “warm glow” as such from donating; it just felt like more of a duty. After all, what is 98p? Not enough money to really miss, but a decent enough amount to make some kind of difference when donated.

I walked back to my car and as I opened the door I saw a shiny £1 coin on the wet tarmac. A reward from God for my charity…..? I’ll let you decide. No, not you, the other guy, behind you, yes you, you can decide.

2006-11-14T15:08:00.000Z

Did you know I was going Coasteering? If so, due to my lack of updates, you might have thought old Neptune had caught me in his net or Davy Jones had towel whipped me from his locker. Not quite, but nearly. Jumping into a wind-swept Irish Sea at high tide on a mid-November morning is a good way to get yourself killed, but if you survive, it's also a damn good way to have some dangerously nervous fun too.

[out of focus water-cam pics to be posted soon]

The drill runs like this:

1. introduction and obligatory, "are you up for it!" hype-speech from blonde surfer dude with the physique of Mr Incredible (seriously)
2. pull yourself into a skimpy, ball-crushing wetsuit, damp from the previous occupant
3. don helmet, gloves and buoyancy jacket and get into transit van to soundtrack of Red Hot Chili Peppers (cliché surf music? check!)
4. drive to windswept cliff edge near ruins of derelict nunnery (?)
5. scramble down lethal cliff edge path. slip....grab gorse bush to stop falling to death. (multiple thorns in your hand? check!)
6. make way over medium size rocks and water to big rock for first jump off. arms across chest, legs together - pencil jump
7. sluice sinuses with ice cold salt water
8. climb onto rock, repeat 6 and 7
9. paddle\bob uncontrollably over to wave battered peninsula of rock and insert self into the small maelstrom hosted there
10. get repeatedly battered against various rocks whilst forcing out collective nervous, "yeee hah!"s
11. get swept down a channel not unlike the clashing rocks from Jason and the Argonauts
12. watch in amazement as instructor and fellow coasteerer are swept off the rock by a 6 foot wave that bowls them into the group
13. witness Dutch guy get his face smashed against a rock and Chris get double-dunked whilst trying to grab some breath
14. laugh uncontrollably
15. repeat until your feet have gone numb and you have lock-jaw from shivering so much
16. get a tow back to shore from Mr Incredible as you think you might drown
17. try to covertly pee in wetsuit through a cold-shrunken, inverted penis
18. get changed out of your freezing wetsuit on the top of the windswept cliff
19. start to thaw out your 'blocks of ice' feet
20. two hours later, thaw out your 'blocks of ice' feet

Remarkably, the recollections I have of this event are good and I want to do it again. What I don't want to do though, is go back to Swansea, where you get the threat of danger, but without the fun. What a dump. Some people like it though. Take this little chap we saw in the park....

2006-11-10T16:13:00.000Z

Of course yesterday's update wasn't my first topic of choice. Most probably those that died in the "technical failure" would have preferred it not to have been either.

No, the update I was going to put up yesterday was another quite trippy co-incidence. Last Tuesday I was watching Mughal-e-Azam and had got to the part where the son of the Emperor is cast out of the palace for getting hammered on wine and balancing whores on some super-size, sacred scales of justice. Give him a break, he's 12, he's experimenting! I confess I found the film a bit dull at this point and my 'Concentration Kid' had already skipped off to the park to play on the swings. Considering my next blog update as a more worthy use of my mind-waves I started to think of an analogy to use for the irony in banging my head on a 'Mind Your Head' sign. I likened it, weakly, to writing, "Danger - sharp" in tiny letters on a sword edge and slicing your nose off as you bring it near to read. Time in the film had since skipped forward about 10 years and very shortly we got to a scene showing the exiled son, in his tent after a battle, writing a prayer in his own blood on the edge of his sword....dum dum daaaaa! It's ONLY a co-incidence!! I am not the Messiah!! Go away!!

......"how shall we go away my Lord?"

A thought has just occurred to me whilst considering this update. Would the devoutly religious fundamentalists, for example the Islamic suicide bombers, consider a society of atheists an easier target when it comes to spreading fear? Atheists have no 'Eternity in Heaven' comfort blanket to get them fearlessly through life (neither do the "faithful" actually if you want to be picky about it). Probably, one could argue, we atheists cherish the current life more so than those that consider it simply a practice run for the afterlife. I don't like this hypothesis: it's a weakness for evil headcases to exploit. Maybe, using the principle of cut-out soldiers on the battlements at night, atheists should put up a fake faithful front to these nut-jobs in order to disguise this potential chink in our armour? I might post this in the Dawkins forums to see what replies I get.

Remember kids, don't have Faith, have certainty.

2006-11-09T12:58:00.000Z

I see Israel have scored another powerful strike against terrorism in Gaza by using a surprise attack of heavy artillery to shell women and children as they sleep in their beds. I can kind of see the logic and I suppose you can't underestimate how many lives the IDF have potentially saved with this latest bombardment.

Certainly there would seem to be at least 10 less children that could have grown up into terrorists and at least 4 less women to bear little baby terrorists as well. So in that respect, a total success and one that the IDF should feel very proud of.

The Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs website comments in their latest statement that the Hezbollah fighters frequently use civilian areas as a shield when launching their rockets against the Israeli settlements. The IDF then have to target such areas for retaliation, although in this instance the shelling was actually just wildly off target and they shouldn't actually have been directing fire anywhere near the homes of the defenceless Athamna family, who were all but decimated in the attack.

"The IDF expresses regret at any harm to uninvolved civilians, but stresses that the responsibility for this rests with the terror organizations, which use the Palestinian civilian population as a "human shield", carrying out terror attacks and firing Kassam rockets at Israeli population centers from the shelter of populated areas."

Hmm, "harm to uninvolved civilians". When you've just killed 18 civilians, the majority of whom were blown into chunks of gore and blood vapour, I think that harm is a pretty inadequate word to be using. Unless of course you want to avoid any kind of admission of atrocity and you'd prefer to use such euphemisms to simply deliver lazy, lip-service apologies.

This comment, purely and simply, demonstrates yet again the absolute disregard the IDF have for non-Israeli lives when carrying out any of their military operations. Whether they are Lebanese, Palestinian, reporter, peace activist, child, baby etc etc, it matters not who gets collaterally crushed whilst they try to stamp on the elusive cockroach of terrorism.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs quite openly admits that this was a mistake, they weren't even targeting the area that was hit, but they then go on to blame the terrorists for making them fire on the civilian area, which they just claimed they weren't aiming at in the first place. They don't care about the logic, because they simply just don't care at all.

I find it continually staggering that the governments of the world can do nothing more than 'tut' at the regularity of these outrages and I marvel at how inured we are to reports of innocent civilians being routinely murdered, a high proportion of them children, whilst sleeping in their homes or taking picnics on beaches.

Transpose their country to yours and think how amazed you would be if there wasn't national or international outrage at a neighbouring country indiscriminately firing artillery at your house, family and friends with impunity and with absolutely no redress whatsoever.

Even taking a heartlessly objective view of the aftermath, Israel still seems to fail to recognise these days that these murders are such colossal PR disasters for them. They alienate their supporters and at the same time justify the actions of their attackers.

I've lived in Israel and I loved my time there. The people were just normal folk living in a tough neighbourhod, but unfortunately the one unattractive trait which manifested itself and the one which I've come to recognise in these incidents time and again, is arrogance.

The Beit Hanoun atrocity is simply the latest in a succession of arrogant, abhorrent, disproportionate, remorseless, careless and unjustified attacks against innocent civilians in the IDF's counter-productive campaign of terrorist cleansing.

2006-11-08T13:29:00.000Z

If you can barely hear me it's because I have laryngitis. This came on as an entree to my horrendous visit to the dentist and is a pre-cursor to the pneumonia due to arrive following the coasteering and sea-kayaking I have planned off the coast of Wales this weekend.

The laryngitis could also have been brought on by the 48-hours solid I've spent howling with glee upon learning of Ted Haggard's dismissal from the National Association of Evil-gelicals (NAE) for having paid for gay sex whilst high on crystal meth.

"I love it!"

That is awesome isn't it? I don't mean gay sex on drugs, I have no idea what that's like (Collard?), I mean the way he went out with a real bang. That's some way to go for a holy man that exerted great energy preaching that homosexuality is a sin that will get you roasted on a spit of white hot steel for all eternity. Remember that smirking that I said I was going to quit, I can't now, it's just too much fun!

Read his confession here and then, whilst on that site, marvel further at the Christian back-stabbing that goes on within these loony camps. When I say 'back-stabbing', that's not some kind of euphemism for any kind of rear-penetration type shenanigans by the way. I just want to make that absolutely crystal (meth) clear, OK?

There's been a foreign kind of feel to my observations this week. On the bus on Thursday Toby overheard a Polish conversation and asked if it was French. Fool, mixing the Gallic burr with Slavic timbre, tch. I told him that it was probably Polish and he asked, "Why would anyone want to live in a foreign country?". Very astute for a 4 year old. Well, my mono-lingual munchkin, they might want to come to the UK and work as a rude barber for instance.

I went to a barber in Oxford on Saturday and was clipped by a Polish ice-maiden who, without any discernible emotion, remarked, "Your hair is very thin". Why thank you deary, I try my best (!). By the way, that's a really good way to NOT get a tip, "you evil Pole".

Other immigrants decide, benevolently, that UK food is drab and too easy to pronounce, so they choose to emigrate and bring us their lovely cuisine and bizarre culinary language. Take the Thai Orchid in town for example where there is a plethora of Priks and Gongs on the menu and you can also get a very tasty Lad Prig or Hor Mok. I rang them on Friday for a takeaway and was able to recreate the 'Dude, Where's My Car?' scene by being asked, "And then...?" after giving each part of my order. If you know the film, you know the joke.

When I arrived to collect the meal I was followed in by a couple, yes that's 2 people (one, two), who had turned up for a sit down meal and were asked, "Table for...?". Err, two maybe, Ting Tong?

There was a touch of irony on Sunday as I nearly concussed myself on a Mind Your Head sign and then some blatant false advertising on the Good Seed - Toasted Hemp Seeds packaging I saw in Tesco.

"Good for joints" boasts the blurb detailing the numerous health-giving properties of the seeds. Well they're not, they're rubbish: burned straight through the Rizla. Actually, maybe that's how my throat got knackered.

On the right: new links, old twinks.

2006-11-07T16:53:00.000Z

wasn't i meant to be writing something here as well??

hmmmmmm.....

monkey tennis?

2006-11-01T16:25:00.000Z

Who wants to hear my dentist haiku? Oh, one, two, three, four... quite a few of you. Here you go then.

Dentist and drill
Suffering to ease pain
Toothache still

I don't think they're supposed to rhyme, but I can barely think straight with the pain. Now, if I had me some of these suckers...

Whilst being penetrated and excavated in the dentists today, I attempted to focus on the radio as a distraction. The news at 12.00pm reported that the 4th most important occurrence in the world today was apparently a traffic jam in Moscow. What?! Oh my god! Quick, the phone! I know that every tender nerve in my handsome head is being electrocuted, contorting my face in febrile agony, but I simply have to call Moscow's Traffic Control Centre to see if there's anyway at all I can assist in this colossal human tragedy. Could I offer telephone support to the trapped wretches or maybe donate money so that stranded motorists can at least be given boiled sweets and travel games such as ‘Boggle’ or ‘I Spy’ (the KGB version) to help pass the time? Oh the poor souls I can hardly bear to think of the number of dinners going cold on family tables or meetings and TV programmes being missed. Oh, boo bloody hoo. Who cares!

Now this, is news.

The only other thing I had to note today was my theory on how the Incas died out. (Not dined out, died out, silly). Their diet, I'm led to believe, consisted largely of maize and sweetcorn, supplemented with seeds and nuts. Now I know for a fact that those particular foodstuffs have a very uncomfortable habit of surviving the journey through the human digestive system, often making a second appearance a day or two later, virtually unscathed. I suggest that it was this lack of nutrients being absorbed into the body that weakened the population to the point of exhaustion. Along trot the paella and chorizo scoffing Spaniards and, “estampido”, end of (civilisation that is)

2006-10-31T17:19:00.000Z

Hey it's Halloween and I have a scary pumpkin face for you...

Well, I suppose you could consider the Halloween themed lunch in the canteen today a huge success, as the food was truly horrific. The sort of fare that I doubt even the most wretched of creatures could stomach. And where was the "fun" element? There were a few half-arsed puns on the menu, but it really was very pitiful. They seem to have chosen a rather unappetizing play on words for some items and passed over what I would have considered perfect pun candidates. For instance, I had the Steak and Kidney Pie. Why not "Stake In Kidney Pie"? Then they called the Chicken Wings and Spare Ribs, "Flesh and Bones", which was less of a pun and more a literal description of exactly what they were. That put me right off. As did the description of the pureed swede as "Bug Mash". Turned out that the steak and kidney pie was awful anyway. Possibly made with the decaying corpses of BSE riddled cows for truly a realistic Halloween flavour? Not sure, but the taste of the kidneys triggered smell memories of cattle sheds, which of course are heavily scented with the secretions of those kidneys - cow pee. Eeyuww. No thanks.

Now something sad, or funny if you're cruel. Depends on how you look at it. Since a fairly young age I've been aware that I tend notice a lot of things that most people don't seem to see and I'm not talking about ghosts and goolies (?) etc. The things that I tend to see are little social situations in which someone is feeling uncomfortable or alienated or awkward. It's annoying. It's a bit like the really emotional dreams that I have that stay with me for hours after I wake up. They are draining, pointless and, as the drug addled Gary Oldman spits in Leon, "I don't have tiiiime, for this Mickey Mouse bullshit!". The classic example of this is being at a party and catching the eye of the loner who no-one wants to talk to who then meanders over. That happen to you once? It happens to me all the time. I'm not explaining it very well, but this latest incident, a sort of heartache-and-loneliness double-whammy, I had to share.

Looking out of our bedroom window on Sunday morning I saw an elderly woman waving goodbye to some visitors from her front door. The bungalows opposite are full of "oldies" and as such there are a fair few visits fom sons and daughters with granchildren at the weekends. You can often tell by the body language of those visiting that they see this as more of a duty that a genuine desire to brighten up their parent's day. As this particular couple and their kids were leaving, they made their way across the road and I was struck, as I often am, by the elderly woman's resolve to stand on her step and watch them walk all the way back to their car. Then I saw how she waited with her hand poised to wave as soon as they turned round or looked at her. They look back, hand shoots up as if electrocuted.

It reminded me of how my Gran used to stand on the doorstep of her house when we were leaving after visiting. She would wait until we had completely disappeared from sight before she closed the door on us. You could crane your neck right round as her house disappeared round the corner and if you stuck your hand out of the window at that split second, she would flash back a wave as quick as you like. Sadly, I'm guessing that as you get old and abandoned you start to treasure visits from your family so much that you want to savour every last second of them before returning to the interminable front room drone of lobotomising daytime TV.

What made Sunday's little tableaux of human misery even more unbearable was the shuffling Bilbo Baggins-type pensioner who had appeared on the pavement directly between the old woman and her family. As the family drove away and she frantically waved her goodbyes, the confused old man mistook her waving as a greeting, leant on his stick and started to wave back to her. She seemed to get annoyed at this misunderstanding, turned her shoulder slightly so as to shun him and then seemed to raise up on her tip toes as if to wave over him! He then looked round at the waving occupants of the departing vehicle, realised his mistake, slumped his shoulders and lowered his head and continued shuffling off into to his own lonely destiny. Too, too sad.

Never one to leave you kids on a downer, look here. I've found a real life Ting Tong for you.

"Oh pwease Mr Dudwey!"

2006-10-30T23:47:00.000Z

If I was in New York I might go to 5th Avenue. If I was in Edinburgh I might go up to Princes Street. In London, down the Kings Road. I'm in Abingdon and I go to the precinct. If one measures the stylishness and success of ones life by the quality of the places where one goes to shop, then I'm just edging above a tinker who lives in a field, washes in a cattle trough and steals his clothes from scarecrows.

I've mentioned before the 1970s concrete horror that is Abingdon's shopping precinct, but I don't think you'll ever truly appreciate the soul-crushing drudgery of it all until you've had to walk the gauntlet of its poorly presented shops and track suited denizens scoffing chips on a weekend morning*. There are 2 beacons of light in this grimy cobwebbed passageway and they are Costa and The Book Store.

Costa arrived in Abingdon about 8 months ago and was an instant (coffee) hit amongst the middle classes who had previously had to brave the proletariat masses of Jenny's and Crumbs in order to get a tea or coffee on a Saturday morning. Now you see them all huddle-snugged with frothy lattes, coats squashed up against the windows and pushchairs akimbo. It's a little oasis for them. A watering hole to revive oneself before moving on through the cultural desert of the precinct. As I mentioned earlier, there's also a little independent bookstore where I generally go to assess the books that I then go and order online to save money. It struck me that this "patronage" of the local bookstore probably isn't that effective at helping them pay their bills at the end of the month and, seeing as I'd be the first to whine if they closed down, I decided to go in and buy The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. As Sarah would say, I'm "bennying" on him at the moment (I'm very interested in him). I had a little smirk to myself (is that gay?) to see it in the Mind and Body Improvement section. Both the store owner and myself had another little smirk to each other when I suggested that it should go into the Mythology section. Actually that is a dangerously high level of self satisfied smirking going on there. Some might say a taunting level of smirking that gets gangs of Luddite precinct dwellers waiting for you outside with cudgels and pitchforks.

I left the shop clutching my blasphemous tome and my ears were immediately assailed with what sounded like a pre-pubescent boy having an argument with his Mum. Following the sound to a crowd of people outside Woollies, I could see that it was actually a squad of God-botherers having a little show. Not as interesting as Punch and Judy, and as such there were no children. That's excluding the 2 teenagers shouting "Oi!" and filming them on their mobiles. The chap with the amazing breaking voice was trying to convince the blank-faced crowd that their purpose on this Earth was to serve God and that if they didn't, no matter how good they were (?!), they would go to Hell. For eternity. What, they would have to stay in the precinct for ever?! Oh ho ho, how amusing of one (note to self, STOP SMIRKING!). I objected to so much of what he said that it made my legs shake and I vowed to bone up (steady!) on my God-busting atheistic put-downs, so as to decimate him and his ilk next time I see them boring people in the name of religion.

If you yourself are getting bored reading this, then that's good. I've done it on purpose so as to help convey the tedium of listening to a squawking Bible basher preaching to jelly-heads in a grubby provincial shopping centre. If you're not finding it boring, thanks very much.

The miggedy mad coincidence that follows on from this, and the real reason I brought up the subject anyway, is that Mr "They've-Not-Quite-Dropped-and-I'm-Thirty" was using a stooge called Alison to answer his staged questions. Apparently they pepper the crowd with them, in true con artist stylee, to join in the event and to help build up the illusion that they're not simply preaching to the converted. Well, as I started to move away I turned around to find a chap I knew from work standing in my back pocket (virtually). I'm sure he was flicking holy water on my back or something.

God Botherer: "Oh, hi there. Are you OK there?"
Me: "Err, yeah" (beam me up, BEAM ME UP!)
GB: "Did you have any questions, you know, about what was being said?"
Me (in my head): "Yeah I bloody well have actually..." (launches into well prepared Root Of All Evil speech, dispatching every argument for the presence of God without drawing breath. Then the freshly converted ex-Bible bashers hoist me on their shoulders and we all sing an emotional version of Imagine by John Lennon as the national news crews arrive and start filming a cross toppling mob descending on the 1200 year old Abbey, marking the start of a global Dissolution of the Church.)
Me (shuffling away meekly): "Err, no. Thanks"

Ha, but beware my friend, the meek shall inherit the earth. Oh, no, that's a God thing as well isn't it?

Anyway, I was relating this story to my manager at work. He knew the chap that had cornered me and was very surprised to hear he was, "one of those". We were then discussing what it was that made certain people religious. What switch is it that get's flipped that stops the logical approach to creation and replaces it with, "Oh, God did it", when I glanced up to see what I thought was this Alison woman from the precinct walking past my pod. I quickly looked up all the Alisons on our intranet and found her working in the department next door. I had no idea this person worked at my office. Spooky. In a town with a population of around 36,000, one of the two named members of the Precinct Preachers (yeah, check that out) works about 10 metres away, and I'm talking about her as she walks past. And do you know what? That's exactly the sort of co-incidence, especially given the religious connections, that some people in this life would take as a "sign". In fact, I'm sure that people have probably been bowled over by lesser examples of mathematical probabilities than this and I think that this is exactly the " trip switch" that we were discussing. The kind that activates when the desire to keep questioning facts and evidence suddenly seems so exhausting that it's easier to simply hand over the keys to your life to religion and to accept everything that then follows as unquestionable truth. To have Faith and to Believe.

And, (yes I can start a sentence with "And" :0) as if the thought of God watching over you wasn't bad enough, we now have this Ceiling Cat creature to look out for...

*This has given me an idea for a shop-by-shop review of Abingdon's precinct to be continued through the weeks leading up to Christmas. If I start at the logical place, at the main entrance, and take the left side first, I will be begin my journey this Saturday from that fashion Mecca for teenage mums everywhere, New Look.

2006-10-27T20:40:00.000+01:00

I understand that there may be some new viewers to the blog. I think you might be a little disappointed with the content, sorry. You'll find that I promise a lot and deliver very little. Mainly, little anecdotes about dreams, music, funny (I think) stuff and things that annoy me. For instance, I am supposed to be reading the Bible to try and get a handle on whatever you religious retards find so life affirming, but I'm finding reading it akin to eating a balloon: you get full really quickly, but when you digest what you've just consumed you find it's nothing but wind and you're left with an empty feeling in your gut. What do you think of that, Bible-bashers?

2006-10-26T20:16:00.000+01:00

No dreams to write about today. But, I did have one of the maddest co-incidences I think I've probably ever had last night. I was wandering around in the kitchen trying to make some hotdogs and suddenly got the urge to mumble (in a faux tribal accent) "dukka dooku dukka dukka dukka dukka dang a dang" etc etc (it goes on for a while). This was a bizarre jingle for MTv that used to be on the telly all the time when I was over visiting Sarah when she was working in Long Island. Being a bit of a retention retard it's stuck with me for all these years, as well as tens of thousands of other useless tunes and ad jingles, such as "Blue Riband blues", Country Life's "betta bit uh buttuh" and "Meow Mix".

I've no idea why I suddently recalled the jingle out of the blue like that. I simply wanted to sing something and that was what popped up.

So, I had the last 100 of my breakbeat 12"s to listen to and thought I'd sit down in the living room to run through them on my little portable record player. The 20th record I played had that sample in it from the MTv advert, and I swear it proper freaked me out. I hadn't heard that silly little chant played outside of my head for about 10 or 11 years and here it was on a track by Blue Light Fever called Ebola Tombola about 30 minutes after I'd just been humming it. Highly improbable and surely my most bizarre co-incidence to date but yet, to me, still nothing more than a co-incidence. There was no divine intervention, no higher purpose, no fate or destiny, no mysterious entity trying to communicate to me. It was just a random co-incidence with a calculable figure of probability, should anyone with a massive brain, computer and an infinite amount of time want to work out.

OK, so there was a dream. I was a giant that fell asleep in a city. I had to lie on my side to fit in the street and lay my arms down alleyways with my head wedged in a piazza so I couldn't move. Why did I dream this? Because I had 2 ibuprofens when I went to bed and slept like a log in the same position all night. Sorry to burst the bubble oneiromancers, but there is nothing mysterious about a dream. Don't think about it too deeply, look what might happen...

2006-10-25T19:38:00.000+01:00

Other people's dreams are boring, so look away now. I had a very short dream last night that I was in a car park surrounded by brambles and willow trees. I started to hear a very loud hissing, which I guessed was a snake and started to run away from the noise, when a 3 ft long cobra poked it's head out from under a bush and launched itself at me. I put my hand out to stop it, but it swallowed my arm whole and sank it's fangs into my shoulder and armpit simultaneously. Nice. Then I felt it stabbing my middle finger with some kind of internal sting. I woke up with a start and found my arm hanging out of the bedclothes and just starting to get the beginnings of pins and needles.

Here's a random picture of a snake eating something. In this case it's an antelope.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but antelopes are pretty fast aren't they? I mean, they outrun cheetahs on the savannah most of the time yes? So this python either parachuted silently out of the sky, was disguised as some grass or was riding a frigging motorbike! Anyway, pain in my arm was what triggered an elaborate dream created to wake me up and move my arm into a more comfortable position.

But what, I wonder, was the point of the next dream? I was a woman in Bournemouth (?!) trying to avoid a thunderstorm in the overgrown garden of a tatty bungalow. Lightning struck the ground near me and set light to a large pampas grass. The man that owned the bungalow was a cruel hunter that had built a concrete channel in one side of the garden, down which his rabid dogs would chase rabbits. When the rabbits reached the end of the channel, where it opened out into a shallow basin, he would blind them with a halogen torch and shoot them with a shotgun. I left the garden fairly swiftly and walked round the shops which were perched on the side of a very steep hill. There I met a really ugly and hairy muslim woman in a cafe and thought to myself, "I wish she would wear a veil, she's hideous".

2006-10-24T16:37:00.000+01:00

I might have a brain disease. I went to call someone today and picked up the mouse instead of the phone and last night I had a dream involving four, pillar-box red weasels, synchronised swimming in pool next to an enormous, inflatable re-entry capsule from an Apollo rocket.

My mindwaves could have been troubled by the late night documentary I watched before going to bed. It was a Storyville program called "Ortho-dykes" on BBC4 about gay Jewish women trying to gain recognition and acceptance from their friends, family and faith. The program title is a great pun on the word Orthodox, but it's just a shame that it was such an upsetting programme. It basically just re-enforced my hatred of religion and it's mediaeval rules, although I would find no allegiance with the women for thinking this, as they wanted to be gay and still be able to be classed as practicing orthodox Jews. Talk about giving yourself a cross to bear. Ooh, another bad pun. I'm off before they start skimming stones off my head.

2006-10-23T15:22:00.000+01:00

Mmm, IKEA make the best meatballs. Meatballs, gravy, fries and lingonberry sauce. Yum. Meal and drinks for three, £9?! It's a bit of a pain that we have to drive about 45 miles to Milton Keynes just to get them though. Also, what I find a bit weird is that they have these cafes right at the top of a warehouse. It's almost like they can't have a restaurant just on it's own. What? They sell furniture as well? Well that's diverse. Not sure it'll take off though.

One of my most vivid memories from primary school (apart from performing a "cough and drop" for a male doctor and a female nurse in a cold hall with 10 other boys) was the assembly where the headmaster played a Simon and Garfunkel record to us as we trooped in and sat down. We were told to come in quietly and to listen to the song that was playing. We had all been seated for about 2 or 3 minutes when the song finished. The headmaster stood up and asked us all what we thought of the song he'd just played. This would have been about 1980-ish and us kids weren't the PSP\iPod touting, txt msging, internet junkies that kids are these days and, not being very music savvy then, we just all kind of murmured, "s'alright". It was a very gentle inoffensive piece of music sung sweetly by Paul Simon (don't know the song name though) and it didn't even register as anything but, probably, some kind of soppy love song. Well, the piece of music was actually about some guy killing his girlfriend, possibly by slamming a brick on her sleeping head, possibly by drowning, possibly there was a knife involved with a lot of blood. I can't remember fully, I was young. Anyway, he made us listen to it again, but this time to listen to the words. And there it was all spelled out, a murder song wrapped up in sugary melodies. It taught us (well it taught me at least) not to take things at face value, to listen to what you hear, to think about it and not just to blindly accept it, and it was quite probably the greatest lesson I ever learned from anyone and certainly the best piece of advice I've ever received (inlcuding "wine before beer makes you feel queer"). This especially as I'm inclined to ignore all advice anyway, confident that I can cope with whatever situation might arise from me ignoring that advice.

Anyway, that lenghty pre-amble goes some way to explain the suspicious mind I have and what leads me to ask questions of the adverts I see on TV. I know that all adverts are trying to get me to buy something, sure, but when they don't directly say, "Go out and buy this product", I know something sneaky is going on and it's my job to find out what that is and protect myself from it. After all, I don't really want to be remortgaging the house just to buy the surfing car I saw one time or the car that does somersaults or the car that sounds like a plane. I don't want to be tricked into switching my mobile phone contract to a higher tariff on the basis of a singing cherry being eaten by a Japanese schoolgirl etc etc. So, the new Sony Bravia TV advert, hmm.

Now the old one I understood, I think. Lots of coloured power balls bouncing down a street in San Francisco to the dreamy melodies of Jose Gonzalez. This enabled Sony to convey the Bravia's prowess (albeit through the medium of my crap telly) at displaying bright colours, moving at speed and then to associate with it the cool factors of Senor Gonzalez and San Francisco. Easy. Now, the new advert adopts a similar approach. This time though it's a lot of exploding paint (bright colours moving at speed again) and the music is cliched-classical, whilst the setting, bizarrely, is a council estate in Scotland. Err, hello?

To me this is Sony saying, "Hi there. You live in a crappy, grey tower block on some sink estate in Bumtown, why not improve your life immensely by getting a £2k TV? Simply shackle yourself to an impossibly extortionate loan with an interest rate inversely proportional to the rate of interesting programmes you'll watch and instantly transform your moronic little face and mushy brain into another kind of receiver dish for radio waves beaming in on a wavelength more damaging than if you'd simply sat in front of a microwave set to cook with the door open. Think of it as a massive rose tinted window onto a world that you'll never see, understand or experience fully".

I don't know what everyone else thinks?

2006-10-20T16:22:00.000+01:00

Today I am speechless. I went to the loo and in the only available cubicle I found the toilet in this condition....

Oh. My. God. It is true, I work with cavemen. In case you can't see, that is poop smeared round the back of the seat and splattered up the back of the lid. I mean, Jesus, did his ass explode or something? It might explain why he only managed to make a cursory attempt at cleaning up after himself, if he had his bowels hanging out of his ruptured sphincter.

Added Richard Dawkins' new website to my favourite links (look right) and was very pleased to get a ticket to his 'The God Delusion' book reading at The Oxford Union on the 14th November, thanks to the QI Club.

Tonight we're off to se Boy Kill Boy at Southampton, so expect some rubbish camera phone pic tomorrow :0) .

I'm still laughing about the panda.

2006-10-19T11:43:00.000+01:00

Looks like I'm at the back of the pack when it comes to discovering the idiocy of IKEA's "Ask Anna" help-bot. See, I'm a cool hep cat who prefers to frequent online music stores rather than flat pack furniture websites, so I can be excused for only just finding out about this grimacing Bimbo of a logic-vacuum. As quickly as I found her though, I quickly tired of her. The small task of trying to prise information out of her regarding a chest of drawers descended into irritable tedium and I finished up childishly haranguing her and trying to trip her up. Small excerpt of my conversation with her:

Me: How do you go to the toilet?
Anna: You can find all products in the product line on the page I'm opening for you now. (opens Search page)
Me: OK. Do you pee pee? (OK, so I'm no Descartes!)
Anna: Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
Me: Format c: would hurt you. Do you have a front bottom?
Anna: Sorry, but that's an object I don't really know enough about to comment on.
Me: It's like a tuppence.
Anna: You said it.

OK, so that conversation ended a little strangely, but I'm bored of her now.

Now I want you to watch this sneezing panda video, with sound.

I don't want to build it up, but if you want to get an idea of the sort of thing that makes me laugh so much that I go dizzy, red-eyed and my body and brain get so confused that I actually end up crying rather than laughing, then watch it ten times in a row like I did. I'm definitely anthropomorphosising the panda into a fat man with big sad eyes. And that's making it funnier!

Later, spoon feeders.