Blah Blah Flowers

He's a ruthless alien killing machine with acid for blood. He's a ruthless alien killing machine that picks up the local language quickly. But when they get together... Alien Loves Preditor.
"His mom's gay? How exactly is that an insult?"
Hot date!

Because I was quite pleased with this one, and because Blogs are nothing except worthless self-promotion and all that jizz...

CD for Ika.
1. Banana Skit - M.I.A. (from Arular).
Just something short and sweet to start things off.

2. My Generation - Patti Smith (from Horses).
Rock! One of the tracks I use too much on these sorts of things, but hey, I've never inflicted my musical tastes of Ika yet, so I get to get away with it.

3. Shifty Disco Girl - Helen Love. (from Love and Glitter, Hot Days and Music).
From a Ramone contemporary to some musical Ramone love-children. After Flux reminded me they existed (and you should be downloading the track before Matt takes it down) I had to include something. It could have been one of many, Jump Up and Down, 2000 mph Girl, Does Your Heart Go Boom despite the dated Britpop references, but I decided to keep it simple, all-out pop.

4. Cool as Kim Deal - Dandy Warhols (from Come Down).
The first album is my favourite so far, I was disappointed by the pop sheen on the third album which smothered their talents. Again, I was spoiled for choice but went with this one because of the next track.

5. Cannonball of Light - The Breeders Versus Madonna (I don't have any idea who created it, I got it from GYBO but can't find the thread either now, so sorry to whoever did this).
A wonderful boot.

6. Disco Fudge - Spaced (from Spaced Soundtrack).

7. Hollaback Girl - Gwen Stefani (from Love Angel Music Baby).
Just for that drumbeat.

8. Hombre - M.I.A. (from Arular again).
My favourite track.

9. Rentaghost Remix - Thriftshop XL (from Thriftshop XL quite some time ago).
We're all of a certain age, so a tune based on one of the kids shows of our childhood, how could I resist?

10. I'm Too Electrified - Electric Six Versus Right Said Fred Versus New Order (from Jaakko at GYBO).
Two joke songs which, when put together, actually sound more meaningful.

11. Waiting For Monday - Gwen Stefani Versus New Order (from Thomas McNab IIRC).
Some day someone will mix this and the New Order/Kylie boot together.

12. Pure Morning (Les Rythmes Digitales Mix) - Placebo.
Years later it's the only remix from the second album that I can still remember.

13. Rodeohead - Hard 'n' Phirm.
Yee-har!

14. The Skins - Scissor Sisters (from Scissor Sisters).
My favourite non-single track. And one that someone who wan't already a Scissor Sisters fan would like.

15. We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful - Universal Poplab.
I wanted a Smiths cover in for Ika, a Smiths fan, it could have been the Tatu cover of How Soon is Now but this is more pop.

16. Better Set Your Phaser to Stun - Helen Love (from Love and Glitter, Hot Days and Music again).
A great end-of-a-CD track.

17. Sunrise - Pulp (from We Love Life).
A friendship song.


We had great fun last night, just wish I had been a little less knackered so I could have appreciated it more.

Oh for fuck's sake.

Verit-arse! Robert Kilroy-Silk, failed would-be hero of the Little Englander, has quit UK politics after a rare burst of self-awareness. Well nearly, although he admits that Veritas is useless he strangely has issues with how Veritas is run, despite the fact that he pretty much set up the party. Still, he's somehow still an MEP so he can still cause offense to foreigners while living in his luxury Spanish villa.

[via Mark13]

I'm watching the CSI: Miami episode where Caine heads north to meet the CSI: NY team. I love the lighting, when the NY team and cops are on screen everything is shades of grey, wintery. When Caine is in the picture it's all golds and oranges, summer colours. When he is in New York, he's surrounded by a subtle miasma of summery colours in the greys and whites of the city. Very nice.

That noise you can hear is the nation's drag queens grinding their teeth: Blair has spent over a thousand quid on slap since he came to power in 1997.

Momentary media musings...

Downloadable V For Vendetta trailer keeps alive the illusion that despite the involvement of the Wachowski Brothers and Joel Silver the film might not be another travesty of an Alan Moore comic (other omens are not good though, Rich Johnson's look at the script sends shudders through the system)

But, more positively:

Ohmygodohmygodit'sDavidTennantasDoctorWho! Eeeeep!

I'm sorry about that, let me get a cloth...

Can Christian Voice afford to go up to the Fringe and protest do you think?

The list of cabaret acts appearing across [Edinburgh's] hundreds of fringe venues next month is littered with provocatively titled shows and many top comedians have declared their intention to flout new legislation which will outlaw 'incitement to religious hatred'... Among those who will be using the festival to test the workability of the bill is Stewart Lee, co-creator of the controversial musical Jerry Springer: The Opera. 'I had wanted to call my show Stewart Lee Likes to Incite Religious Hatred, but I thought it was such a bad, woolly law, that it would not still be around by the summer,' he said. His show, now called Nineties Comedian, will run at The Underbelly venue. 'I have tried to write the most indefensibly blasphemous show there could possibly be,' he said. 'A lot of it is a dialogue between me and Jesus about what counts as acceptable forms of expression. It ends with Jesus asking my forgiveness.'

There's no mention of whether he plans to try and piss off Muslims as well.

Actually, that's fairly positive, I seem to recall a vox-pops in the back of the Pink when we had the 2003 Bicon and the article in the centre of the Pink which was much worse. Still, when they did this the heat was probably warping the fragile little minds of the poofs as they minced down Old Compton Street swapping popper patterns and sniffing their curtain fabric...

[via B3ta]

So, on a scale of Daredevil (ugh, some vast new realm of suck) to X-Men 2 (yay!) Fantastic Four rates below Incredible Hulk when it comes to Marvel adaptations. It's flaws are fairly obvious, the main one being the cast, all of whom lack any kind of charisma as either heroes or villains, though in their defense the script does not give any of them chance or reason to shine. Ioan Gruffudd is just appalling as Reed Richards and only seems to have got a handle on the character by the final scene, playing someone with the pliability of plastic he acts with the stiffness of an alpine forest. I never watched Dark Angel so I don't know whether Jessica Alba, who plays Sue Storm, makes a career of underwhelming, it's a shame that when she first turns invisible she doesn't stay that way for the rest of the film. Chris Evans seems to be playing a Johnny Storm that was either modeled on or written for Sam Rockwell, and just comes over as a charmless, over-privileged, moron. Michael Chiklis is the best of the bunch as Ben Grimm/moving rockpile The Thing, but with a script that requires him to continually be reminded how he's an inhuman freak he doesn't get much to show much of the humour of the character in the comics. And Julian McMahon as Victor Von Doom, maybe if the script wasn't such a load of arse he might have had a good stab at a memorable baddy, as it is he comes along as strictly third-rate in the pantheon of Marvel movie badies, compared to McKellan, Cox, Nolte, Dafoe and Molina he's extremely poor.

The biggest problem is the script. The biggest problem is the story is an origin story. Now, this was the same difficulty that I think messed up Hulk, perhaps unsurprising as they share a writer. Part of it is the glacial pace of the story, the only fight between the heroes and the nominal baddy of the piece, Doctor Victor 'not a real doctor' Von Doom, doesn't start until about an hour and a quarter in, and this film is only ninety minutes long. Most of Doctor Doom's villainous activity is to skulk around his penthouse and sulk that the inexplicable object of his attention, Sue Storm, doesn't care for him. The Fantastic Four's powers don't properly kick in until nearly halfway through the film and the immediate reaction of Sue and Reed is to hide away trying to find a cure for them, while Ben is shunned by society as a monster, except for Kerry Washington as blind Alicia Masters who sees through the visage to the monster within, yadda yadda. Kerry is onscreen for no more than a cumulative ten minutes at most and acts better than everyone else. With Johnny's aforementioned arrogance we lack a human anchor for the story.

If the whole story of the Four going into space, getting zapped by cosmic rays and getting strange powers could have been condensed into the first half an hour, so the rest of the story was about Doctor Doom's various machinations then it wouldn't have seemed so bad. If the script-writers had thought to give some amusing lines to the cast it would have helped. We have only two action scenes, neither very big, when the Four save some firefighters put in danger by the Thing going out in public and the final fight with Doctor 'not certified by the BMA' Doom.

Fantastic Four, Hulk and, to a degree, Spiderman, all seemed as though their were hamstrung by having to present an origin story for their character. Batman Begins didn't seem to feel this, though perhaps, as with Superman and Smallville, the willingness to pare a story down to the bare essentials and then spin off in something which does not match what is considered 'official continuity' is perhaps something that's an advantage. Bruce Wayne did go 'to the East' to learn the skills he put into practice as Batman, Batman Begins manages to integrate the 'history' with the new story of Ra's Al Ghul to a certain degree of success. But all the Marvel characters have backstories that defy being so easily broken down, Spiderman has to be a jerk so his uncle dies so he learns 'with great power comes great responsibility' but does Johnny Storm really have to take eighty minutes to learn how to fly, does Ben Grimm really have to wait eighty-five to shout "it's clobbering time!"?

The film ends with an immobilised Doctor Doom being shipped to Latveria, the made-up Western Russian homeland of the character, in a shipping container. This film also needs to be locked away and perhaps dumped at sea to protect us all from it's toxicity.

I'm rather worried about the reports yesterday of this guy who was shot, not so much because he was shot, though any loss of life is to be avoided as much as possible, but because reports seem to agree that he was wrestled to the ground and then shot. If he had been a bomber with an explosive device controlled by something in his hand, shooting him in the head still risks him setting it off as he dies doesn't it? Or have I been watching too many TV shows?

I wish I'd taken my camera to work with me today 2. As I was going to work I walked through an underpass that I go through every day. At the other end was one of those big units like bins on wheels that municipal workers wheel around while collecting litter. On top of it lay one such worker, obviously deciding he needed an early morning nap...

Two weeks ago...

Today...

Kids! Swearing, it's not big and it's not fucking clever.

Have you ever wanted to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders or Frogger, but substituting David Hasslehoff for the main characters of each? Well, this is your lucky day spunky!

"A few days ago, I was a little girl who walked though a world of colours, of hard and tangible forms. Everything was mysterious and concealed something; I took pleasure in deciphering, in learning, as in a game. If only you knew how terrible it is suddenly to know everything, as if a flash of lightning lit up the earth. Now I live on a sorrowful planet, transparent as ice; but which conceals nothing, it's as if I had learned everything in seconds, all at once. My girlfriends, my companions have slowly become women, I grew up in a few instants and today everything is pliant and lucid. I know there is nothing behind, if there were I would see it."

Frida Kahlo.

For 26 years, strange conversations have been taking place in a basement lab at Princeton University. No one can hear them, but they can see their apparent effect: balls that go in certain directions on command, water fountains that seem to rise higher with a wish and drums that quicken their beat... Using random event generators... they have participants focus their intent on controlling the machines' output. Out of several million trials, they've detected small but "statistically significant" signs that minds may be able to interact with machines.

Bombs on tube trains? Pah, been there, done that. Come up with some new ideas you lazy sods...

Here we go again eh?

Was 'chilling' with my 'homies' by The Serpentine Gallery yesterday, I did pop in briefly but wasn't that impressed by the Rirkrit Tiravanija exhibition. I was much more keen on the pavilion outside, which we sat beside. I can't claim to understand anything about the architect's claims that it establishes a "dialogue" with the Neo-classical house’ except that talk like that makes me want to establish a "dialogue" between his face and the ground, to me it looked more like the abandoned carapace of some insect or perhaps it was waiting to be covered in earth and be turned into a hobbit hole.

There's one less fuckhead in the world today. He leaves far too many behind though...

I wish I'd taken my camera to work with me today. As I came home I saw an old man in clown clothes, big clown dungarees, and a balloon hat, shuffling in the opposite direction, studying a map in his hand intently, with a big frown on his face. I suspect some young child may be disappointed this evening.

Actually, the Libri report is better than I could have hoped, the second half of the report is all "Why won't anyone listen to us? I hate you! You're not my parents! Listen to me when I'm talking! Waaaaaah!" Libri have become sulking adolescents! Excellent!

It's a Monday! I'm back at work! It's lovely and sunny outside! I'm back at work! And I'm stuck here until 8:00pm!

But despite this, I have my copy of Half-Blood Prince, and to cheer me up further I have the latest ridiculously out of touch report from Libri, those mysterious, self-appointed, endearingly out-of-touch throwbacks that want libraries for books and books only damnit!

Perhaps only in this country would anyone think it was worthwhile to debate what public libraries are for. They’re for books, stupid. For borrowing stuff to read at home or on holiday. For looking things up in reference books in clean, decent and welcoming surroundings. For somewhere quiet to get on with homework or other research. For mums and dads to have somewhere quiet to introduce their youngsters to the delights of the printed page. And of course, the service is free at point of delivery.

Pipes, slippers, whipping the houseboy, moaning about those insolent darkies...

The problem, alright, one of the many problems with Libri as I see it is that we know nothing about them. They published Tim Coates 'Whos in Charge' report last year but we could ask the same of them. They don't reveal who the secret masterminds are behind Libri or what their own personal prejudices are that form their campaign. They don't do any research into what the public want of libraries yet make copmments such as

If the experts were to ask the general public what they want from libraries, they would get a simple answer: books, well-displayed in welcoming surroundings which are open at convenient times.

Prove it.

Jaako - Danger! Danger! I'm Too Electrified - Right Said Fred Versus Electric Six Versus New Order. Oh yes. If you don't like this then you support terrorism. Fact.

Cute singing horse thing.

Do you feel torn? Do you feel as though you're a cannibal trapped inside a vegetarians body? Then you need Hufu, the Healthy Human Flesh Alternative! Apparently it tastes like beef, not chicken.

How do you know Hufu tastes like human flesh?
The taste and texture of Hufu are the result of painstaking research and extensive testing in our kitchens. We are supremely confident that our food products would satisfy the tastes of even the most demanding cannibal.

Uh-huh, how do you know? Have you found any cannibals to try it?

Where did you get the name Hufu?
The original concept name was "hofu," a combination of human and tofu. However, one of our business associates was describing the product with a friend on a Eurostar train going from London to Paris. Milla Jovovich, the actress and super-model, overheard the conversation and intrigued, turned around to join in the conversation, and commented, "Hofu" sounds like [the male organ] -- you should call it "hufu." We thought her insight was highly original and insightful, and we thought Hufu definitely had a better ring to it.

Is there any chance that this is all the result of one of those drunken pub conversations that are all about "Dude, and then we saw that chick from Fifth Element!"?
[via Memepool]

Did the attack on the London Underground succeed because the Bush administration released the information to win their election?

Read the entire story. There's nothing to directly blame Bush for, but Ridge's involvement looks rather suspicious.

Also, Bloggerheads points to this map of the exclusion zone within which people will not be able to protest the actions of their government. Notice the total lack of proximity to Kings Cross. One pacifist demonstrator in Parliament Square is obviously more dangerous than four terrorists with homemade bombs.

I was never very good at those magic eye things but supposedly this is a map of a Peruvian desert which shows Jesus Christ. To me it just looks like a black smudge but hey, all religions contain a necessity to see stuff that isn't there, so who am I to argue?

My Stupid Library User O' The Day Story: How about the guy who has left his laptop unattended on the top floor despite us telling him it's a really bad idea? He's just popping out somewhere and seems to think that leaving it in the library is a good idea. Anyone want a free laptop...?

John O'Farrell snipes at the new Harry Potter book in the Guardian. Divorced from reality and unrealistic seems to be O'Farrell's main complaint.

John O'Farrell campaigned on behalf of New Labour at the last election. Pot, kettle?

Some straight people find 'dyke' more offensive than some lesbians. Oh you wacky San Franciscans, so tolerant that even the hets are prepared to fight battles for their gay kin, yet missing the point so badly...

Alan Shore (James Spader): You're good when you get testy.
Denny Crane (The Shatner): Came easy today. My balls hurt.
Shore: [pause] Let's have that be the one and only time you tell me that.

I now love Boston Legal.

Less so Wonderfalls which started last week on Sky One and is impressive in spending the first twenty minutes or so of the first episode defiantly bringing nothing new to the table at all, dialogue from Buffy, camera moves from Angel/Las Vegas/All of the Law and Order stable, unnecessary sciencey shots from CSI. The overarching theme of a young girl forced somewhat unwittingly to do good deeds for people, well take your pick, but did Tru Calling make it beyond a season? I suppose Dead Like Me has proved to be inexplicably popular.

I suppose it's me, I mean, I'm twenty-eight so am at exactly the right age to appear as a teenager in an American fantasy TV show, but I'm losing the interest in watching them. Or perhaps lost. Maybe the reason I didn't like the last few seasons of Buffy was the daily soap of her disastrous life frequently overshadowed the fun elements that had hooked me at the start. But I've also always had a problem with these strands of genre TV specifically of the 'do good to others' type (as distinct from shows such as Buffy and Knight Rider or The Fugitive, the 'do good to others' have some blameless shmoe get a message, normally from God, to help other people, so Wonderfalls, Tru, that show where the guy got next day's newspaper, probably some others I've forgotten) and their brainless 'you know, if we were all nice to one another the world would be a great place!' routine. OK for a single show, but boring when you have to base a series on it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, James Spader is calling...

Iraqi minister says troop pull-out would 'take the country into hell'. Interesting use of the word 'take' there...

Aaah, the eternal dilemma of hot weather: Do I wear jeans or a skirt to work?

Apparently when there's an emergency, like bombs exploding on the Underground, a certain group of key people put on special clothing and go out on the streets, approaching those that look disconcerted or vulnerable and say the words "have you heard the good news about the Church of Scientology?" 'Volunteer ministers' on the street.

Open mind over bomber's identity.

There has been intense speculation over whether the attackers were a "home grown" cell or came from abroad.

Investigators have still not ruled out either possibility - nor that there was some combination of the two, with a UK group being supplied with bomb-making expertise or equipment from a wider European network, or even one that stretched to Iraq or beyond.

Hmmmmmmmm?.

God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule.

"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord... "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

[via The Busstop Girl]

Your concern for us is touching. No really, I'm touched.

"Their [the G8 leaders] topic number one, believe it or not, was global warming, the second was African aid, and that was the first time since 9/11, and they should know, and they do know now! That terrorism should be number one!"
"The topic just changed!" [laugh]

"...It is an area that has a very large Arab population surrounding that station, a large number of Middle-Eastern restaurants, so it's a further indication, if indeed these attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda-affiliated cells that these people are, if necessary, prepared to spill Arab blood in addition to the blood of regular, err, non-Arab people living in London."

"My first thought when I heard... on a personal basis that there had been this attack, I saw the futures this morning which were really in the tank and I thought 'hmm, time to buy!'"

"The International Olympic Committee missed a golden opportunity today, if they had picked France, if they had picked France instead of London to hold the Olympics it would have been the one time we could look forward to where we didn't worry about terrorism, they'd blow up Paris and who cares?!"

Yet if you were to turn the last one around, if you were to say, for example, "The I.O.C. should have given the Olympics to New York, the terrorists would probably like to have another crack at getting a few more buildings and who'd care, it's only Americans", which bunch of ignorant, racist, xenophobic, war-mongering fuckheads would be the first to make a ruckus? Fox News, where maliciousness admires the cut of stupidity's jib. Fox News: We Fabricate, You Decide.

And then there's 'Our Ally, Our Problem' where, if you ignore all the facts that don't fit the case, then the U.K. is the greatest terrorist threat facing the U.S. right now.

Meanwhile, I'm just hoping Omarion is okay.

The best/worst joke I could think of was 'It's the Dagobah Dialogues!' but neither of the characters went to that planet so... Han and Chewie.

Ken hits the right note:

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others – that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

Charlie Bunter says that ID Cards wouldn't have stopped what happened yesterday but we should still have them anyway. But Bunter, we have to build an entire Olympic complex on the east-side of London and Blair may want to have another war before he leaves office, wouldn't it be more sensible to save the money for those?

We all know that Government IT projects have a habit of being totally useless, late and more expensive than originally stated, but look at Holyrood and the Scottish Parliament building, building projects can also be all of those things, so take the money you would have wasted on ID Cards and waste them on a couple of white elephants for the Olympics instead!

Fuck, I was looking for key phrases but I think I'm going to have to put the entire thing:

A Letter To The Terrorists, From London

What the fuck do you think you're doing?

This is London. We've dealt with your sort before. You don't try and pull this on us.

Do you have any idea how many times our city has been attacked? Whatever you're trying to do, it's not going to work.

All you've done is end some of our lives, and ruin some more. How is that going to help you? You don't get rewarded for this kind of crap.

And if, as your MO indicates, you're an al-Qaeda group, then you're out of your tiny minds.

Because if this is a message to Tony Blair, we've got news for you. We don't much like our government ourselves, or what they do in our name. But, listen very clearly. We'll deal with that ourselves. We're London, and we've got our own way of doing things, and it doesn't involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives.

And that's because we're better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we're going to go about our lives. We're going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we're going to work. And we're going down the pub.

So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city.

From The London News Review.

They say:

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, may peace be upon the cheerful one and undaunted fighter, Prophet Muhammad, God's peace be upon him.

Nation of Islam and Arab nation: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroic mujahideen have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.

We have repeatedly warned the British government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.

We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused.

God says: "You who believe: If ye will aid (the cause of) Allah, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly."

We say: Fuck you, and the jihad you rode in on.

However, I've heard it claimed that Charles Clarke used this as an opportunity to tout ID Cards as the thing that would have stopped this. However, haven't found any proof yet...

And just for those pro-war types that ever said, wrote or thought; "Just you wait until they attack your country":

The racist opinion. Mainly a variety of 'kill all the Muslims' and 'send them home' filth.

We're closing early tonight, at 5:00 pm rather than 8:00 pm. The guy who was complaining the most about not leaving in the mid-afternoon has already left, despite the fact he was picked up by car by his partner and they live in the next borough along. My line manager, who is having to stay with a friend because she otherwise would have faced the impossible journey of north to south London, is still here and will work until 5:00, because she's not a skiver.

Already reports seem to be that things are getting back to normal. Trains and buses seem to be slowly coming back. Americans living in London have been talking about how impressed they are by that 'bulldog spirit', absolute crap, but we have had plenty of experience of the IRA trying to bomb us, so we don't go to pieces in a crisis. I expect most people know will be starting to think "hang on, three-day holiday!"

I wonder how long it is before Charlie Clarke claims that ID Cards would have saved us.

Useful sources of information and pictures.

We're closing work early this evening, mainly for the staff members that have to try and work out how to cross London with all the transport down. Most of my friends have reported they're okay, haven't heard from a few who either have got their mobiles off or are affected by the switch-off of the mobile network in North London.

Blair's claiming it's terrorists trying to disrupt the G8 summit. Because, of course, when the G8 summit is in Scotland, you attack the south-east of England. Maybe after they bought the semtex the terrorists didn't have any money left over for a bus ticket? Things seem so anarchic up there you would have thought real terrorists would have slipped in amongst the protesters, something the police have always used as an excuse to attack the genuine protesters.

Christ! Of course, I'm expecting Shrubya to rush to the side of bLiar in his time of national emergency. It's the least the little bastard could do.

Oh shitty fuck-bakes. Excuse me, world? Hello? WE INVADED IRAQ, remember? We're supposed to be fucking pariahs for a while yet. You don't give us presents. You bunch of idiots.

Adding to my 'things to do' list.
23. Shoot Sebastian Coe through both of his knees.

This is a bloody steaming disaster for both London and Britain. Actually, it would have been okay if it had gone to somewhere else in the country, anywhere else, except the place that's probably the place least suited to holding a large sporting event. Some Anglian swampland would make a better Olympic site than London.

So,

Londoners taxes will go up, because we'll be fucked if we want to pay for decent treatment for the sick and infirm but we'll want to build luxury hotels for the super-rich.

The Government will give away even more cash to anyone that runs a transport system in London because the private companies that run them will insist that they can't use their money to improve our service, yet improvements to the system will be negligible.

By the time 2012 rolls around we'll have something that makes the Millenium Experience look the bestest party ever and all the clods who made this pointlessness possible will be far away from here.

Actually, there's no way on earth we can manage this. The Oympics never work. So perhaps the rest of the world knows exactly what it was doing giving it to us.

Well okay, but if he goes mental you better have Harrison Ford on hand is all I'm saying... Yes, it's time to dust off the old 'We Can Build Phil' and 'Do Android Phils Dream of Electric Vast Active Living Intelligence Systems?' jokes with the synthetic Philip K. Dick.

See, this is a problem I have with twenty-four hour rolling news, with the BBC rolling news in particular. It would seem that today there is nothing happening in the world at all except for the deliberation over whether Britain, or one of a number of other countries, gets to hold the 2012 Olympics. The BBC News are too keen on trying where they can to find one particular story and then obsess about it over the day. When it's a story where events are changing, like a war, then fair enough, but when it'a story where nothing now will change until an announcement in some four or five hours time, it gives the impression that the fabled BBC news team doesn't actually have enough money to find other news.

There's an interview today in the Guardian with the man who Charles Clarke attacked in his 'attack the man when you can't attack his arguments' policy when the LSE described the ID Cards scheme as more-or-less useless here.

You Are 16% American

You're as American as Key Lime Tofu Pie Otherwise known as un-American! You belong in Cairo or Paris... Get out fast - before you end up in Gitmo!

I'm wondering if it's actually possible to get much lower than that in this quiz...

Let's not get too excited about the latest poll on ID Cards where support has dropped to 45%. In the last fortnight there were two polls on the costs of ID Cards where one said that people wouldn't want to pay much more than the £90 estimate, while the Government had an almost identical poll which had broad support for the 'we'll pay whatever you want! Take all our savings!' category. So I expect we may get a new poll rushed through to show that support is holding high and steady.

Now we get to see the 'Special Relationship' between the UK and the US for the rubbish it is. Bush rejects doing any favours for Blair over the environment as thanks for his support in Iraq War: "Tony Blair made decisions on what he thought was best for keeping the peace and winning the war on terror, as I did. So I go to the G8 not really trying to make him look bad or good, but I go to the G8 with an agenda that I think is best for our country."

Libraries shouldn't encourage people to read books, should instead help governments promote their health, educational and social objectives. You can't be sure whether this is just lazy journalistic writing, as in my 'umble opinion, libraries ALREADY do much more than lend books (to the chagrin of Tim Coates and his ilk) and ALREADY promote other objectives, a library that has no material to help educate people, or no information on who people need to speak to or where they need to go with a problem isn't a library, it's an empty building, literally.

This should be seen as the modern "exciting challenge", 154 years after the opening of the country's first free public library, a Westminster seminar will be told. "We should not look at libraries exclusively as free bookshops," one of the main speakers, Professor Mark Hepworth, is due to say.

This is indeed the modern 'exciting challenge', it's just that libraries atarted dealing with it years ago. Only someone who doesn't actually go into libraries would think they are 'free bookshops'.

Walked round Mayfair this afternoon, with the weather teasing all the way about whether it was really going to start raining. It's one of those parts of London I've never visited, bordered by Picadilly, Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch and Oxford Circus I've managed to walk all around it but never into it. Didn't realise there was so much to see, Berkeley Square, Grosvenor Square with the blocked-off American embassy. It's quite sad really, concrete bollards, our police with guns,what should be this proud beacon to the world made tiny and imprisoned by their fear. Conversely a more anonymous building a few streets away said it was the Saudi Arabian embassy. It's just like this folded away little world.

One day we will be bored with manga that treats the kids show Rainbow in a disturbing adult manner. But that day is not this day.(NSFW!) [via B3ta]

Some sort of evil. Do you remember the good old days, when Quizilla had quizes rather than really half-arsed Harry Potter fanfiction?

London School fo Economics director accuses Government of 'bullying' over their report critical of ID Cards. Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the study was "technically incompetent"... Mr Clarke said the findings of the study, published earlier this week were "fabricated" and did discredit to the LSE's reputation... he also accused one of the academics who helped to prepare the report of being "partisan" because he was already set against the cards... (Whereas, if he'd been in favour of them like Jumbo Clarke, he'd have been an 'unbiased seeker for the truth') 'Mr Clarke had branded the study as "mad" before he had even seen it,' Mr Davies added... Responding to the letter, a Home Office spokesman said Mr Clarke stood by his comments last week.

Sounds like a standard week in Her Majesty's Government to me.

Japan develops robots to patrol offices, shopping centres and banks. Looking at the picture of the critter it looks like it wouldn't be much good against human problems, bank robbers would be able to evade it by walking briskly. But does it growl threateningly like the big robot from Robocop?

Update: Following extensive media activity and some misleading reporting we would like to clarify The Co-operative Bank’s position in relation to Christian Voice... Like other extremists, this group would claim the benefits of freedom of speech for themselves, whilst seeking to deny them to others via the creation of a climate of hate.

I've managed to finally get a full torrent of the Global Frequency pilot and am amazed that we don't have a series of this on our TVs right now. I mean, from their perspective it's got elements of X-Files with the scienceweird and the secret organisation, there's stylistic references to the technogoth used in The Matrix and it's filmed like CSI. It's basically hitting a number of buttons from successful stuff over the last decade. I don't know why no-one wanted to pick this up.

I've also worked out that pink-skins shouldn't wear orangey-gold nail varnish. That only really goes with brown skin. This was your PSA.

PEOPLE who are both fond of animals and allergic to them can shout "Hallelujah!". Adrian David Cheok and colleagues at the National University of Singapore have developed the Touchy Internet system. It connects users to a real chicken via a chicken-shaped doll, an array of sensors and a webcam link. The idea is that you stroke the doll, and then the real chicken, which wears a lightweight jacket containing tiny vibration motors, feels the touch in the same place. [via New Scientist]

The question is, how much of the chicken's body does this 'lightweight jacket' cover? Hillbilly geeks are hanging on the answer.

Q: What do Blair and Geldof have in common?
A: They were both in shit bands when they were young and now have a career in inflicting grievous pain on the British population.

If you are reading this you had better hate horses!

The Very Model of a Modern Labour Minister.