Saturday, August 04, 2007

[blogfocus saturday] the silly season

We're definitely in the silly season when major bloggers turn off the moderation and word verification in an effort to get commenters and when almost everyone talks of going away for some time.

The clever get other bloggers to guest post during the hiatus but it's a losing game really - people just aren't blogging to the same extent. We begin with a triumvirate of friends and there was a recent birthday party extraordinaire.

1 Geoff Jones explains the itinerary:

On Saturday July 28th I finally come off age. That is the age when you get free bus tickets, 30% of rail travel and 10% of ski passes.

Everyone is welcome to join me at one or more of the following places on the big day.

09:00 In line at Cambridge railway station to collect my pass :-)

10:30 Swimming at Jesus Green followed by celebratory drink.

11:30 Walk to Grantchester and lunch at The Orchard

15:00 Punting on upper river (weather permitting).

19:30 See Taming of the Shrew in the gardens of St Johns College (Queens Road entrance).

2 And Sally in Norfolk reports on it:

My favorite part of the day was going to see Taming of the shrew in the gardens of St Johns college. It was so good I almost didn’t notice that it was pouring down with rain. My cake turned out really well and was enjoyed by everyone… not a crumb was left.

3 But Ellee Seymour was elsewhere engaged at the time:

When we last stayed in Centre Parcs two years ago, I was in the spa having a detox seaweed wrap and had been coated all over with green slimy stuff and wrapped in silver foil, the lights were dimmed, the music played softly and I was dreamily dozing off when the fire alarm suddenly went off. I half hoped/dreaded a hunky fireman would come and rescue me, but I was unceremoniously rushed into the shower by staff and ushered out quickly in a toweling robe; and all for nothing as it turned out to be a false alarm.

4 Meanwhile, either in South Africa or Scotland, not sure which, The Good Woman reflects on expat bloggers:

Expat postings can be compared to marriages. At first there's the frisson of being in something new - finding your way around, forming early opinions, the desire to be open minded and to make it work. Then there's the wedding - the day you find your new home, the furniture arrives and you celebrate having done it.

The honeymoon follows closely thereafter. The routine is new and, therefore, not boring. You relish the new things that are better than the old things that irked in your last posting. You begin to explore your new home. But it still feels like a long holiday.

5 Juliet Pain or Julie if you wish goes back in time to the day the dingo supposedly took the baby:

The Lindy Chamberlain case (1980s), wherein baby Azaria was carried off by dingos, while the mother was accused and found guilty of her murder, being sentenced to life in prison. Some years later the torn and blood stained clothing belonging to baby Azaria was found, upholding the mother's version of events, that she had been taken by dingos.

6 Ian Russell went to WOMAD and reflects on the hygienic standards in eating in public places:

Furthermore, she said, getting into her stride, this is also why there is a ridiculous amount of wrapping of foodstuffs in shops. A banana in cling film?! Onions in a plastic bag?! Plastic bags provided for all sorts of foodstuffs already blessed by nature with a hermetic, inedible coverings?! She certainly does have a point. Modern western human is paranoid about picking up germs.

7 Mr. Fact earned one cent from his AdSense and wonders:

Does anyone know people who actually make any money from Google Adsense? As today’s total shows, I’m not sure it’s worth it to have all those irritating ads on the page (but are they more irritating than the text itself?) - although it would appear that some people can use it properly… Do you hate them (the ads, not the people who make thousands with them)? Should I get rid of them?

8 Inspector Phil A is right on the case of the EU and its clandestine wording of the constitution which was rejected in referenda but went ahead anyway:

The official English translation of the New EU Constitutional ‘Treaty’ is now out – It has not gone unnoticed that they waited until Parliament were off on their 10 week summer break. They have taken out the actual word 'constitution' and have avoided enshrining legal status to the EU flag, motto and anthem.

They have done a Find/Replace on ‘Foreign Minister’ and changed those references to ‘High Representative’. Mmmm - ‘Catchy’. They must have been reading Lord of the Rings again.

I'd like to announce that I shall not be going away on holiday and though my stats have suffered an extraordinarily major and inexplicable [to me] slump today, still we'll soldier on and reiterate that it's the quality of the readership, not the quantity.

Hope to see you on Wednesday evening.

[celeb couples] pass me the paper bag

I looked for ages for a suitable celeb couple photo, from Lennon/Ono to Brangelina and they were all sickening. Had to go back to a real celeb couple here.

Devout Christian Scientist Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes "have reportedly decided to pose nude for a magazine", in accordance with their beliefs.

As Michelle Johnson of the Melbourne Age pleads:

Tom, please, we've already been scarred by your couch-jumping antics and public displays of affection - enough is enough!

Or as one of the commenters pleaded:

Why can't couples just do it like john and yoko - straight up nude no effects with lighting or props or computers just "have a look at me todger and check out me missus tits".

Bogie and Bacall were my parents' generation so it's hardly likely that they would be touted by me as a romantic couple and yet who else since the 50s would be worthy to tie their boot laces? Posh and Becks?

Of course you recognize this famous couple, don't you?

[stop press] female gives birth

Birthday cake for previous daughter, Su Lin

Hot off the world press today - a 16-year-old female has given birth after two and a half hours in labour:

The cub's gender was not immediately known. "All we've seen so far is a leg and a tail," said Dr Ron Swaisgood, co-head of [San Diego Zoo's] panda program.

"Usually the mother will bobble the cub or her paw will slip and the cub will cry until it's repositioned," said Swaisgood. "But [Bai Yun] was keeping that cub so content it didn't cry at all.
It made a few squawks and that was it."

I'm getting confused with this family tree. Bai Yun, Hua Mei, Su Lin. And do Panda's really squawk? These are the pressing questions this Saturday morning. Have a nice day.

[moral rearmament] have to go to iceland

Blonde pole-dancing in her natural glory

Like this one a lot:

Goldfinger in Kópavogur, Iceland’s only remaining strip club, is without a license to host strip shows after Reykjavík’s police chief refused to recommend the issue of a permit for the club.

The owner fights back hard:

In an interview with Fréttabladid daily, Ásgeir Davídsson, the owner of Goldfinger, argues that no strip dance has taken place in his club since the new law came into force because the girls aren’t completely nude. He says he going to appeal the decision of the police chief to the Ministry of Justice. “I feel like I’m living in a police state where it’s up to one man what will happen,” he says.


All right, I know you think I cheated you over the blonde. So here's a real girl in all her glory.

Friday, August 03, 2007

[eyes wide shut] or some other inanity

Bit of a gruelling day and the eyes are closing up. Can't see the screen. Want to answer your comments and visit but tomorrow morning now, if you'll permit. Night night.

[bourne series] darker and darker

To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and keep absolutely sober. [Logan Persall Smith, Afterthoughts, 1931]

Ditto with fame. A first movie where we "discover" the talents of a vibrant new actor is infinitely preferable to the inevitable third movie, intended as a vehicle for the fully fledged star.

Reason? The star in the making is still raw and fresh, still amenable to being directed, still negotiating his salary. And much more than this, chemistry is possible between star and co-star, with few demands, hardly any tantrums on set and the result is often a pleasing and harmonious whole.

There's no distortion. It's a movie focused movie.

In Identity [2002], Franka Portenta, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, Clive Owen and Chris Cooper and Damon himself added weight to the adage about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. And there were some great scenes, as Jeffrey Anderson says:

Liman is obligated to run Bourne and Marie through the expected car chase [and] he doesn't try to outdo "The Fast and the Furious" with pyrotechnics and editing. Instead, he raises the level of filmmaking simply by giving our heroes a few moments to breathe when the chase has finally ended. Bourne guides the car into an underground garage, and the pair simply sit for a moment and allow the experience to sink in.

Ditto the tense game of cat and mouse with the Professor [Clive Owen]. There were classic moments in identity.

Then the inevitable happened in Greengrass' Supremacy [2004] - the co-star was killed off early and the chemistry also died. The closest it got again and it really did get close, was with the remarkable but feisty and morose teenage actress Oksana Akinsha near the end.

Don't get me wrong - you have to like Matt Damon and the Bourne character suits him to a tee. James Berardinelli said at the time of Identity:

"If it came down to Damon's Bourne versus Affleck's Jack Ryan, my money would be on the former."
But as the sole star?

Which brings us to this tendency and it is controversial in Bourne, of playing great actors in bit parts. Kevin Wohler, on Julia Stiles, the enigmatic Nicky:

"As in The Bourne Identity, this great actress is underutilized. She has one good scene with Damon before her character completely falls out of the story…"
Michelle Monaghan was virtually never in it.

The reviews so far say Ultimatum [2007] is an excellent film and so it may be if you're a Matt Damon fan. I'd half expected the series to become darker and darker and darker, as seems to be the way these days. Referring to Jason Bourne, Manohla Dargis says:

"The light seems to have gone out in his eyes, and the skin stretches so tightly across his cantilevered cheekbones that you can see the outline of his skull, its macabre silhouette. He looks like death in more ways than one."

But there are supposedly some high points which lift it into the category of thoroughly entertaining and Dargis says:

"it introduces a couple of power-grasping, smooth-talking ghouls and stark reminders of Abu Ghraib that might make you blanch even if you don't throw up."

The question is - how long the series can be sustained for?

Mal Vincent quotes Matt Damon:

"It's the end," Damon said. "I can't imagine how we could go on with the story beyond this. Maybe we wait 10 years and do a movie about Jason losing his car keys, or something like that. Don't count it out."

Which is an interesting comment, given this dialogue in Identity:

Jason Bourne: I don't want to do this anymore.

Conklin: I don't think that's a decision you can make.

[hot] bring on the autumn


Just wanted to let you know I bought an outdoors thermometer yesterday and on my outer balcony it's now a very Limoncello like 38 degrees Celsius. Can't stand it.

Seems they're having their problems in Iceland too.

[chivalry] simple respect and deference - both ways

I really like this picture so much.

My attitude to women is mixed. First there are the very strong role models I had and more on that later. Secondly there is the result of my disastrous liaisons and I'm fairly sure now why they were so.

Dr. Phillip McGraw, whatever you think of either him or his credibility, did say that "we are treated as we teach people to treat us".

Margaret Thatcher said that "there is no such thing as society - only individual men and women and families".

"Rights" is a social construct. It implies that intervention is necessary to ensure these and most Americans are well aware of constitutionally guaranteed rights and are ready to fight oppression.

As I say, I had very strong role models, even before external forces of oppression like feminism raised their ugly heads. Even in the days of the unreconstructed male, my mother was strong and our family ticked over with clear roles.

My mother cooked and my father washed up. He built things from wood and painted them and my mother took care of the strategic direction of the family, e.g. where we'd go on holiday, where I'd be educated and so on. My father went along with her view because it was she who had done the homework on it. Just once or twice he put his foot down and said no.

My father never once raised a hand to my mother and I, as a headstrong nineteen year old, only once ever raised a hand - to my father.

He looked at me calmly, unflinchingly and said: "You're in no position to do that, James."

I wasn't and I felt shamed that I'd even seen fit to do it.

It's utter garbage to say there was oppression here. My parents' friends were similar. I am thinking about them now and what characterized each of these families was that the lady was a Lady. Yes - a Lady with a capital "L".

Enormous amount of foibles maybe, unrealistic and stubborn often but in demeanour, a Lady. That's why the gross vileness of the female in this link is so offputting and saddening. She is like a writhing snake in her manner, however just her cause is. And try these ones for size.

We are treated as we treat others and we teach people how to teach us. I taught my women to walk all over me and they did. The temptation was too great when I refused to dominate or give the lead in some areas. I'm told some women like being dominated - well, I think this can be done subtly and confined to sexuality - it doesn't have to be 24/7.

No woman wants a deferential robot and there's a lot to be said about the sexual animal coming out on the living room rug or the kitchen bench [move the dishes first] or at the theatre or in the forest or at the beach [where else can I remember?] but that's not what I'm talking about here and you know that.

In our family, in everyday issues, my mother directed the show and my father went along with it and took care of the details. I expected to do the same in my relationships but clearly I was with the wrong women and they mistook refusal to dominate as permission to dominate. Except that I can't be dominated and so the signals were all wrong.

And then, at the end of the tether, I confess I acted in less than a gentlemanly manner and the hometruths were pretty savage from me and to the point. Whatever chance there'd been was killed off at that point.

You can say all you like about women taking responsibility for their words and actions but I still say it behoves a man to stand above it all and be a rock. If only I had done so and I'm determined that if I ever find a true love again, then this is how I'll act.

"Deference." I really do believe this is the key word. For someone to defer to us on some issue is to value us as people. Surely that's all we want to start with and then the respect and love flow from that. You can't legislate for deference. It has to be earned.

And why, in this whole feminist debate, have the words "rights", "oppression", "prostitute" and other negatives abounded and why has the word "Lady" barely seen the light of day? And "Gentleman", for that matter?

Thursday, August 02, 2007

[whisky] and it's relationship to stats

Actually, it's a lie - I only have an old blended left - a bit of Chivas

I know it's a pain in the butt the way I never come clean concerning the true state of affairs but I'm going to continue that tradition by mentioning that I just checked the stats and sometime today I went into 6 digits. Think that deserves a little tipple, late though it is. Cheers.

[chivalry] and the hegemony of feminism

Most people know Michael Bucci's list of chivalrous acts which men should indulge in and I'm right behind the idea. Men should observe good manners and so should women.

Linda Lichter is far more hardline about chivalry:

[Writing of the Titanic] I never had the courage before to openly admire those men or envy the women they saved. At least a decade before the siege of political correctness, I was silenced by the unconscious but relentless intimidation of female friends and colleagues who are educated, self-sufficient, and eager consumers of the latest feminist books.

I am supposed to owe the authors of those books unqualified gratitude for all the hard-won rights the Titanic women never enjoyed.

I would add another [thing here]: that emotional and physical esteem for women is central, not tangential, to manhood. The British statesman Lord Chesterfield, a favorite source of Victorian etiquette writers, believed everyday deference was due to all women because it provided their only shield against men's superior physical strength.

He added, "no provocation whatsoever can justify any man in not being civil to every woman; and the greatest man would justly be reckoned a brute if he were not civil to the meanest woman."

This hits the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned and is central to what chivalry means to me. Though men and women are the same - i.e. we're both human but in different forms - and though there are good and bad on both sides, chivalry recognizes "womanhood" as something to be revered and makes no distinction. You're a bad woman? You'll still be treated courteously by chivalry. It's a safety net, a catch-all and chances are that the person who is chivalrous will be this way with men as well.

Blogger Kelly Mac [and I admit she is vehemently anti-feminist] is reflecting on the early years of feminism:

Namely, where were all the "good" women when feminism started? Why didn't the women who knew they were not being abused do something to stop the misinformation that spread like wildfire? Aren't these women just as deserving of men's contempt as the hardcore feminists who started it all?

Ruth Malhotra gets down to specifics:

The notion of victimhood, that “women are oppressed and exploited,” evokes strong anti-male sentiment.

Many influential feminists demonstrate extreme animosity towards marriage and family life, even likening the institution of marriage to that prostitution.

In Feminism: An Agenda, radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin declared that the home was a dangerous place stating, “Like prostitution, marriage is an institution that is extremely oppressive and dangerous for women.”

The feminist agenda is offensive to women. With Eve Ensler and her contemporary cheerleaders in the feminist movement, initiatives such as the "Vagina Monologues" have become a central part of Women’s Awareness Month programming on campuses around the country.

The "Vagina Monologues," often promoted as a wonderfully inspiring event to empower women, is, in reality, nothing more than an atrociously written anti-male tirade, portraying women as pathetic sexual objects who will forever be victims. Such programs are not only blatantly offensive towards women but are vile and vulgar.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese sees it this way:

It has not been easy to acknowledge that feminism has promoted the unraveling of the most binding and important social bonds. Not easy, but unavoidable. Like countless other women who cherish improvement in the situation of women in the United States and throughout the world, I was initially quick to embrace feminism as the best way to secure our "rights" and our dignity as persons. Like countless others, I was seriously misled.

In practice, the sexual liberation of women has realized men's most predatory sexual fantasies. As women shook themselves free from the norms and conventions of sexual conduct, men did the same.

There can be no doubt that women's situation has demanded improvement -- and continues to do so throughout much of the world. But the emphasis upon individual rights at the expense of mutual responsibility and service is not the way to secure it.

Worse, it is destroying the fabric of our society as a whole because it is severing the most fundamental social bonds. Binding ties constrain women, but they constrain men as well. A Danielle Crittenden has noted, the family "has never been about the promotion of rights but the surrender of them -- by both the man and the woman".

Kelly Mac agrees:

It's about the fact that dating today has become nothing but a series of pick-ups and one-night-stands (thank you sexual revolution).

It's the new vulgarity in young women, societally enforced, which upsets me. I don't know if they are trying to shock [and girls are emotionally maturing much later these days, babies or no babies]; it's the lack of graciousness in John Edwards two harpies, for example [here's one of their political comments, courtesy of Michelle Malkin]; it's the desire to be some sort of hard nut hoe for the boys - who knows?

Seriously - there's some sort of paranoid mania going down here where any sort of respect between men and women doesn't get a chance to breathe, where bile and spite constitute debate and the desire of the ordinary person for a normal relationship is mocked and derided.

What's wrong with revering a woman to the point you can't live without her and want to marry her, to have children with her, to do what comes naturally vis a vis protective instincts, without dominating one another, without constantly going on about "rights"? What's wrong with working in tandem and actually enjoying one another? Why does it have to be outside marriage?

What's wrong with normality?

[pigeons] rats with wings

Ken Livingstone's old jibe about pigeons being "rats with wings" is a disgrace to the memory of the hundreds of brave pigeons who went through shelling, trained killer-hawks and countless other vicissitudes to deliver the message and save our heroic men and women in the last conflagration.

Wartime gallantry

Since Roman times the pigeon has come to the aid of man:

In the Siege of Paris in 1870, as the Prussians advanced, a balloon called La Ville de Florence sent off three pigeons at 11 a.m. They were back, mission accomplished, by 5 p.m.

A brave French pigeon named Le Vaillant was awarded the Ordre de la Nation.

Another, Cher Ami saved the lives of the 77th Infantry Division's "lost battalion" at Verdun by delivering 12 messages and returning to his loft with a shattered leg after he was shot. He won the Croix de Guerre with Palm and died in 1919 as a result of his wounds.

Pigeons' core competencies

Their uncanny ability to home has been speculated upon since time immemorial.

Of course you're all familiar with Hagstrum's hypothesis on the Great Pigeon Debacle of '97 [known in pigeon circles as "The 97"] which proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt that climate change is real, that women are more receptive to male advances in direct proportion to the amount of outlay for the evening and that pigeons navigate by some sort of ultra-sound.

US Geological Surveyer, Jonathan Hagstrum, in studying this event, noticed [that when] the racing pigeons were crossing the Channel, the Concorde was flying along the Channel also. In flight the SST generates a [downwards] shock wave, a carpet of sound almost a hundred miles wide. The racing pigeons flying below the Concorde could not have escaped the intense wave of sound. He concluded that the pigeons who did make it back were the slow-coaches who missed the Concorde.

Lifesaving

A heroic pigeon did a swan dive into a New Lourdes swimming pool and pulled a drowning 2-month-old baby by her hair to her hysterical mother poolside. Ms. June Carroway stated: "I was frantic, but I couldn't save her. I can't swim either." The pigeon made sure the baby was lifted out of the pool by her mother and then flew away.

Public service

Many know of the decisive statement made on George Bush's jacket on the White House lawn by the sparrow pigeon, Le Dump, who eluded radar, concealed snipers and security men, causing apoplexy to Dick "Fire-at-anything-which-moves" Cheney.

Forces amass

One would think that, with such a long and distinguished record of service, a slight rear end faeces retention design problem, unfortunately resulting in "combined deposits up to several tons a year and costing £15 million to clear up", might be overlooked by the killjoys.

Not a bit of it. Even Bill Bryson, in Notes from a Small Island, Black Swan, 1995, pp 137/8, gets stuck into Rock and his buddies:

I took my pack and ticket to the requisite platform, where I sat on a bench and passed the time watching the station pigeons. They really are the most amazingly panicky and dopey creatures. I couldn't imagine an emptier, less satisfying life.

Here are instructions for being a pigeon:

1. Walk around aimlessly for a while, pecking at cigarette butts and other inappropriate items.

2. Take fright at someone walking along the platform and fly off to a girder.

3. Have a cr-p.

4. Repeat.

Oh yeah? Well let me tell you, Mr. Bryson, that:

Hattie Grove High School have proven that feral city pigeons do not wander about aimlessly among hurried pedestrians but are actually dancing with them. Biology student Jervis Mason stated: "I spent 4 days observing them in a downtown crossing and studied their behavior carefully. The patterns they follow can only be the pigeon version of the Square Dance."

So who's perfect?

Admittedly they do sometimes get a little out of line but I ask, open-armed, who doesn't?

A gang of marauding pigeons held up a Bubble Creek convenience store and made off with $567 in cash and a package of Armour hot dogs. Said dazed clerk Annie Costello, "At first I thought they were punk kids dressed up like pigeons, but then I realized they were too small to be kids."

Well, OK. They did do that one. A bit.

But that's no reason for Uberfuehrer Livingstone to pursue his campaign of persecution on the poor homeless pigeon who needs our love and care if we'll only give him a chance. For goodness sake, not content with banning their feeding, consigning them to agonizing deaths from enforced starvation in Stalag Trafalgar:

The mayor's attempted coup de grace came when he hired two Harris hawks to patrol the skies. The opposition Liberal Democrats have criticized the program. The hawks have cost taxpayers 226,000 pounds since 2002, while killing an estimated 121 pigeons, the party says.

Poop Cross mercy mission

To the rescue comes:

Lowestoft Council, who are driving birds away from residential areas to specially built feeding and breeding areas in less sensitive places. So has the pigeon problem been solved? Lowestoft certainly have had successful results with the designated breeding areas.

Oh what a sad and sorry tale for the poor rock pigeon. Is there no end to the depths of depravity the ingrate humans will inflict on our feathered allies?

A plea by Walt Pigeon

O Pigeon! my Pigeon!

Rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the dung is flung—for you the bugle trills;

For you not grain and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the Mayor a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager hands a-feeding;

Here Pigeon! dear feathered friend!

Please crap on Kenneth's head;

It's his dream that on the square,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

[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.