[blogfocus wednesday] of ghosts and promiscuity

1] Richard Madeley has a blog. If you appreciate his society, which many of us do, you may not appreciate his skewering of this British Sacred Cow:

Is there anything so mundane as the British love affair with the garden? When I see adults kneeling on their padded mats at the edge of shrubberies, I feel like giving them the final coup de grâce before burying their heads beneath well mulched biannuals. It’s homicide that’s as justifiable as it’s fertile, and at least we put them out of the misery we call ‘doing the garden’.

Because nothing is as futile as gardening. Does nobody feel for those poor grey fellows, stick thin, who work all winter long, preparing their idylls for the warmth of summer, only to find the imbecilic neighbours appear with the first bumble bee of summer?

UPDATE: Curiouser and curiouser. It now appears that Richard Madeley is not Richard Madeley after all. Oh dear.

2] Important post from Bryan Appleyard about the exploding pigeon population:

Troubling news from Hollywood. Pigeons are to be given the contraceptive pill. Pigeons hoping to make it in the movies have been flooding into Tinsel Town, encouraged by the Bird Lady who leaves 25 pound bags of seeds at 29 strategic locations. The Pill will, of course, lead to family breakdown, teenage promiscuity, drunken driving, depression, rehab-jail syndrome and confessional, sadder but wiser appearances on Richard & Judy. We should encourage condom use before it is too late.

3] Dave Hill is not usually noted for his intemperate language but he wasn't counting on Dubya:

Pig in shit situation, or what? This morning the talk was still of the chemistry with Dubya and whether or not tiny divisions had appeared: our troops' "overwatch" in Basra compared with the Baghdad "surge"; the PM calling the less politically-damaging Afghanistan the terror "frontline" when the Holy Potus was saying it's Iraq; Gord talking of terrorism as "crime" whereas for Bush-boy it's still all about "ideology."

4] Rilly is in a Super quandary about the genuineness of her blog:

Hilly laughed. ‘Bloody hell’ she said, ‘Do people know how much you stage stuff just to get something to write on your stupid blog?’ I was rather annoyed at this suggestion, I must say. It did seem most awfully unfair. ‘Look Hilly, darling,’ I said, exasperated, ‘You said you didn’t want to be in the blog so just bugger orf and go up to your attic and read Harry Potter or something’. ‘Well!’ exclaimed Hilly, 'that has to be more realistic than your blog!’ ‘Oh, just go away will you Hilly, and be sure not to wake the baby!' Hilly’s jaw dropped. ‘You've had another baby?!’

What's the High Street coming to? Male strippers in thongs, incommoding passing wheelchairs!

5] Confession time for Big Chip and his fittle rit of lage:

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what came over me. I’m normally a great advocate for disabled rights and I would never normally push a wheelchair out of my way. But when I get something in my head, it’s hard to stop me. Of course, if the guy hadn’t made a point of wheeling himself in front of me while I was rushing for the bus, I might not have acted the way I did. And he shouldn’t have threatened me with his crutch. And what kind of person needs a wheelchair and a crutch?

6] Longrider says the government shouldn't come between gay couples and their guesthouse hosts:

Okay, do I think guest house owners are wrong to discriminate against gay couples? Yes, absolutely. Do I think they should be allowed to do business with whom they choose – even if doing so damages their business? Yes, absolutely. If turning away trade is what their conscience tells them to do, and that trade goes next door, then so be it. Should any of this be any concern whatsoever of government? No, absolutely not.

7] The Lone Voice has hit on the answer to life, the universe nd everything:

See I now know where I and 99.9% of the people in this nation have gone wrong, forget this working for a living game, forget the struggle, hell forget all about paying through the nose in taxes.

Hell shack up with some skank of a woman, have her pop out a whole tribe of junior chavscum and sit my arse down in front of the telly on a whacking great £44,000 in benefits a year, oh and don't forget that nice £500,000 property, thanks to the local council.

8] Ghosts in the Machine gives a ray of hope to all porn viewers out there:

According to PC World, Ask.com will be the first major search engine to offer an anonymous searching option to users. Their new AskEraser feature will give users the option to request that their search data not be stored.

This is in stark contrast to Google’s recent announcement that they will reduce the time they save search data from over 30 years to “only” two years. In spite of Google’s voluntary reduction in cookie life, European privacy experts, among others, have soundly criticized the lifespan of Google’s cookies.

That's it for mid-week. Now an apology before signing off. I've written to Sally, Geoff and Ellee and I know I promised this evening but think it's going to fit the theme better on Saturday so I'll keep them until then. See you, I hope, on Saturday.