I should just except the fact that my view, the ceiling of the stone I seem to be living underneath is the way things are and that I should only, in future, rely on barely audible messages being shouted at me from outside. This occured to me when I see that 'The Rum Diaries' by the good Doctor is being made into a film with Colonel Depp in the head role. Why, when I waste so much time surfing the net, does the important stuff slip past me - its not even if I spend my precious gas guzzling hours staring at porn but instead I find myself reading the newspaper, which I could buy and read - in the real world.

The rains just about stopped so I'll make a dash out now....working like hell, things to do, shrews to molest. That kind of thing. Check out the basement elf.

There's plenty of examples out there of how America has lost its superpower status (to nature, rather than terrorists - ahh, the irony) but I think this is quite an extreme one.....Prisoners Abandoned in Jail as Waters Rise.

Oh bollocks, a stressful day of planned blatant consumerism foiled by crap shops....I was attempting to purchase, with money, the new ipod photo with its cool colour screen and nice curvey shape. I didn't even want any huge vulgar memory size, no a mere 20 gig would suffice (sufficient for 7500 songs, or at least my collection of Eddie Izzard and Bill Hicks shows). But the gods of consumerism thwarted me and after being told by the chap at the Apple shop (as in official fucking outlet) that they didn't have any and better still, had no idea when they would, I was feeling pretty tetchy. I bought a Hunter S Thompson book which I had not read and then broke the speed limit across town to get to On-Off, a huge electronics retailer, which-as you might of guessed-did not have any ipods either. Its not often I get afflicted by the desire to buy anything costing more than the price of a paper back or a dubious quality DVD but when the desire hits me, it hits hard. The last time, incidently, was for a punch bag - which was very easily purchased but carrying the fucking thing across town almost killed me.

Angst: I'm not in the UK, where theres a big party going on to which I was invited and a load of my chums will be at...sigh.
Book: Been reading loads of good comic books recently including Swamp Thing as well as Quiver (a return of the Green Arrow) which was written by Kevin Smith, as well as continuing with the story of Bone. Currently digesting Adolf by Osamu Tezuka and Hunter S Thompson's Kingdom of Fear.
Steven Seagal: In his latest movie (Submerged) his characters name is Chris Cody...which is still not a patch on Casey Ryback or Forrest Taft. Hang about, this would be a great solicitors company though: Cody, Ryback and Taft. Wierdly, I found a movie called 'The Untitled Onion Movie', still in post production and with no proper title..our man Stevie is credited with the awesome name of, wait for it, Cock Puncher.

Very funny viral advertising from Rockstar games (part of a battle against a anti-gaming lawyer).......

"Before, when I would buy drugs, I would have no idea what to do with them, so they used to sit, untaken on my side board. After years of buying drugs, but being unable to take them due to ignorance, I had pounds of crack, heroin and reefer stashed in my house. Then, thanks to the internet, I learned how to take them, using a vacuum cleaner, a car battery and a small dog. I am literally out of my mind all of the time and my life has turned to sh*t. Thanks a lot, internet! I say, turn it off!"

If you've got a spare 30 minutes I suggest you go look at http://www.jabberwacky.com/which is a Chat Bot which learns from the responses it is given as people chat with it online. Its strange, not a little compelling but, at present, theres little reason to think you are not talking to software. Heres an excerpt from a recent conversation we had:

Jabberwacky:Okay. What is the name of my Guinea Pig?
John:How could I possibly know that?
Jabberwacky:I am not bitter. Why do you say that?
John:I did not. But its nice to hear that you are not bitter.
Jabberwacky:Which is better?
John:In what context?
Jabberwacky:Any context.
John:Its better not to be bitter.
Jabberwacky:Possibly.
John:Have you ever been bitter?
Jabberwacky:A radioactive spider? How did you know?
John:Bitter not bitten!

and....

Jabberwacky:No, they are turning yours. You're scared of confronting your creator. Don't be. I think you will find that he will be extremely happy if you do so. B.
John:That makes absolutely no sense what so ever.
Jabberwacky:Never said it would make sense. But I am spanish, I have the right to act insane.
John:That made me laugh.
Jabberwacky:That makes me laugh.

Gotta love it...... "The 'Corrupted Blood' plague is not the first virtual disease to break out in online worlds. In May 2000 many players of The Sims were outraged when their game characters died because of an infection contracted from a dirty virtual guinea pig. "

Very funny....read, laugh, go back to work (but keep sniggering)...see more posters here.

Oh for fuck's sake....the March of the Penguins becomes a pawn in the struggle for intelligent design. New York Times Article.
Whats next? Michael Moores documentaries used as evidence against Intelligent Design due to their subject matter - i.e. Bush - clearly being the result of very dim design.

Mindblowing stuff about hydrogen powered cars....Montreal Gazette - canada.com network

Returning with the theme of strange, slightly incomprehensible flash games....eyemaze

The Finger of Time.
Those moments when your life could have gone in two different ways are hard to clearly identify. I think most of the time we come to the situations we are in because we drift into them, and just as easily, we drift out. But sometimes it's possible to say, pretty much for sure, that something was a pivotal moment. I'm not talking about getting hit by cars or near misses involving drills and lurking electrical wires in plaster board - sure these are pivotal as well, but only in that they represent a 'stop.....carry on' moment. No, I'm talking about those events where things could have been different for your whole life. Example. Years ago, before I even entered the heady heights of sixth form I was in an English class. I guess I was about 14 or 15. The teacher, who had the unfortunate moniker of 'smelly' Minton (not something she was given at birth, but rather a schoolboy/girl comment on her, probably wholly imagined, poor hygiene. This myth had perpertrated our school so much that each Christmas, poor woman, her desk became inundated with soap and tins of deodorant) gave us an assignment on a poem by Coleridge called Christabel which goes on and on and on....anyways, Smellie's assignment was to write a story on what happened next - given that Coleridge never bothered to finish it (understandably, he was propably interrupted by the postman again, or just to fucked on opium to care). So, with my young writers muscle flexing I wrote a convuluted jarn involving witches, and curses and whatnot. I was pleased with it, thought it pretty good....and I guess it was okay because Smelly decided to read it out in class. Now, you have to understand - to get the full pivotal moment thing - that this was not the first time my stories had been read out. Right from little school my stories had been read out to the class by various teachers (most of them sweeter smelling), my joy only slightly tempered by the fact that the hard kids would make sure I received a punishment beating on the bus home for daring to stand out. So Smelly launched into my story and the class, dare I say it, was almost listening with half an ear. Even to someone like me, whose idea of high literature was Terence Dicks's Doctor Who Stories I thought it sounded pretty good. My young heart swelled with pride and I realised that, yes, I could be a writer. And then it happened. Smelly, in her excitement misread a crucial word. 'Tinged' - how hard could it be, I mean the context was right and everything. But oh no, she read out 'fingered'. So, instead of the sentence 'the witch tinged Christabel with her evil' (which suggested lingering malice) we got 'the witch fingered Christabel with her evil' - which, in the lanquage of the playground, sounded like soft porn. A mutter of laughter ran through the class, my cheeks burned, Smelly continued unnoticing and my dream of being a writer turned to ash.
Which is a sad story.
Nothing terrible happened, but just one incident out of many which sticks and has repercussions. But hang about, what if she had read 'tinged' and that hot sweaty summer day was disturbed only by my school bag being hurled out of the bus window on the way home, rather than the suppressed laughter of 20 odd kids. I've of probably decided, on very flimsy evidence, to become a writer and taken English and Drama 'A' levels. I'd have probably got some mediocre grades (given my twin obsessions at that age with a. not working and b. wanking, this was almost a foregone conclusion) and gone off to somewhere like Netherly Edge Polytechnic or Clackington College of Higher Education to study Creative English. Once there, (and thus not meeting any of the fine people I was to meet in later life in the 'fingered' timeline) I've have hung out with a group of chain smoking, bitter, angsty wanna-be writers. We would have rejected everything - particularly those who thought our cutting edge essays and short stories were wanky crap - and generally been pretty miserable. My heros would have been Mailer, Hemingway and Thompson and, having neither the physical stature of the first two or tolerance to alcohol/drugs of the last, I would have felt shamefully inadequate. Sure, some stories would be published in second rate magazines but nothing would ever get to the big time. Unlike, Melvin, from our writers group who would drop out in his second year after getting shortlisted for the Booker prize and being lauded as 'the great white hope of British writing'. Oh the agony, especially as he owed me a fiver and had shagged the thin asmatic goth girl who worked in student bar that I fancied. Plus he was always really enthusiastic about my work but you always knew, deep down, that he was a cunt. So I leave college with a Desmond (2:2 - say it aloud and you'll get it) and go on the dole for a few years with the intention of writing the next great English novel. As it turns out, I can't even write the next great Clackington novel and eventually find myself teaching English at a school where, if I'm lucky, I get through the day with only a mild punishment beating (and thats just from the other teachers). In my mid 30's I find myself headhunted by Offsted and end up touring failing schools, writing reports on bitter angry teachers who hate me, and then sleeping alone in a bedsit in Crewe where I hate myself - the only thing drowning out my sad lonely thoughts being the couple shagging next door.
Which is a sadder story.
So, Smelly, I am glad that you fucked my story, even if only with a finger, as I suspect that in that instant of time in a hormonally charged sweaty classroom things could have been routed on a very different road.

The splinter comment which crept in below (and not the comment about Tags - which I will deal with Ned!) reminds me that I need to talk about the unpleasant chat room experiences I had recently....more to follow.

I promise to include more normal stuff, and actually add some content here but until that time comes - heres some news about Dwarf Bull Fighters.

"Instead of sitting on horses and spearing the bullock with spiked wooden pikes as in real bullfighting, the pair have fleecy pantomime-style dummy horses attached to their sides, providing padding, and their aim is to hit the animal with a squeezy plastic hammer."

BBC NEWS | Programmes | This World | Costly love in modern Estonia: "The first event takes place in a nightclub where contestants are asked to dress as their favourite Soviet cartoon. "

ain't it cool....online RPG - you're limited to 50 actions a day and I ran out before my character could get to safety, does not bode well. Makes me feel like I'm 13 again. - Urban Dead.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, youknow, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (shechuckles slightly) is working very well for them."......Babs Bush says it how it is....one country, united.....yeah right.

So, farewell then, Michael Sheard who terrified me as Mr Bronson, the epitomy of all the nazi teachers I ever had (from his obit I learnt that he played Hitler on no less than 5 times - including in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade....Himler as well.).....The Empire Strikes Back was always an opportunity to see Mr Bronson (or Admirel Ozzel in this case) get finished off by Darth. He was also in Dr Who between the years '66 - '88 but I have no real memory of him in that.

pastafarians unite.........guardian features his noodleness.....Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Pass notes

Gruniad article on Katrina Blogs....

A blogger on the roof of his house in New Orleans.....this is all getting very disturbing. Click here.