The World Cup still hasn’t started. And I can’t wait, because the sooner it starts, the sooner England can get kicked out and the sooner we can have normal tv. Every product on the market somehow manages to squeeze a football cliché into their TV ad. I’m waiting for the World Cup specials for immodium and tampax.

So, if you were to get so fed up with the constant wank of football that you left the sofa and, if desperate enough, the house, you’d be horrified to discover that london is now an England flagscape. There are bits of Eltham that resemble a BNP rally…

But rather than start a rant on the subject, I shall simply direct you to a typically brilliant piece from Charlie Brooker which is more succinct and funny than anything I could manage anyway. I mean…he’s my hero:

Nowadays, when you see an England flag on a car, sprawled across a T-shirt, or flapping from a novelty hat, you no longer assume the owner is a dot-brained xenophobe. Instead you assume he’s just an idiot. And you’re right. He is.[…]
It’s a great piece of visual shorthand. Imagine the outcry if government passed a law requiring the nation’s dimbos to wear dunce’s caps in public.
[…]
Instead, every numbskull in the land is queuing up to voluntarily brand themselves. They even pay for the privilege! As brilliant ruses go, it’s the most brilliant, rusiest ruse you could wish for. I can’t wait for stage two, when they’re persuaded to neuter themselves with safety scissors.

The Pirate Bay, the world’s favourite bittorrent brokers, have been raided by the Police, illegally, according to the owners. What I didn’t realise is that these guys were actually attempting to start a political movement in Sweden.

I just hope their parrots are ok…

Lisa has given birth to a lovely girl. If you don’t know Lisa, you may still celebrate!

Why can’t there be more football on the telly ? It’s only on every fucking night. And only just over half of the ads and TV programmes are all about it. I think the TV stations just aren’t trying. OK, the world cup hasn’t even started yet but by now everyone in the UK should be a rabid, jingoistic, singleminded moron….oh hold on…etc

Yeah well in the past month the country and, seemingly, the rest of the world, has shifted further to the right and politics is a very intersting place. However I’ve got my head stuck so far up my own arse that I haven’t even got round to writing anything about it. Again, I can’t recommend the Spy Blog highly enough as a good source of information on how less free we are all becoming by the day. Also, please take a few moments to keep an eye on this poor sad bugger who is due to be sent to the U.S. to be burned in public as a witch as a result of his computer activity. The guy sat alone in his room night after night accessing illegal information…he’s 40. Was it child porn ? No. Was it terrorist information ? No. Was it hacking into military computers ? No; despite the accusations. Sadder than all of these, he was looking for evidence of aliens in the US .mil servers….didn’t even get a Barclays out of it (I hope). This ISN’T hacking…it’s just very sad. Especially as he’s about to get slaughtered live on US TV as a punishment (probly). But he is going to be made an example of…poor sod.

I bought a badminton racket on Sunday. I feel fitter already 🙂

Loads of other things of course but most unblogable. For my own benefit, here are some memory joggers:

• Friday – Michele’s leaving do at Zulus (Big saffas, biltong at £3.50 a go)
• Me and Tony meeting another me on the train – the wonder of l2k6 t-shirts…
• The Hob, champagne, Katie, Mike, Ian and broken glass.
• Near fisticuffs and Tony doing his ‘leave it he’s not worth it’ bit. “Doc” Martin
• The Rosie, Andy, Cherie and the stripping lesbian DJ
• Nice parrot
• Working and Julie Andrews

DTrace now runs on FreeBSD!. If you’re a geek and like FreeBSD then this is a wonderful thing. If you’re a geek, but don’t care about FreeBSD then here’s a list of the top 25 worst tech products. If you’re not a geek either, then here’s a picture of a big bee for you instead.

Last night was a televisual feast as the BBC hosted one of the most spectacular shows of the year: the relaunch of the Father’s for Justice guerilla protest group live on the National Lottery! Such stirring stuff; watching desperate, disenfranchised people reclaiming their media. The only problem with it was that, despite being on prime-time saturday night TV, it was on the lottery; was anyone watching ? Thoughtfully the BBC were kind enough make the clip available on their news site.

The BBC are in my good books at the moment. A few weeks ago I sent them an email complaining that the aspect ratio on BBC 4 was all to-cock which made watching “The Rock and Roll Years” almost impossible. Not only did they fix the problem while I was writing the email (now that’s service) but I got a call from a lovely woman in their Engineering department the next day apologising! Wow! Look and learn pArcel Force, BT and all you other bastards.

Anyway, as well as the protest it was Eurovision night, and what night it was. Just like the good old days. And what with an almost daily emergence of new European countries, all of which vote for their arch enemies in the name of peace, we can be sure that the UK won’t be winning any time soon; which means we will continue to have Terry Wogan’s essential commentary! Top notch entertainment.

As if the British public could take any more excitement, ITV competed with its own star studded extravaganza: The Princes Trust 30th birthday concert! Set in the grounds of the Tower of London, a massive array of 3rd rate artistes with flagging careers, trudge through their tired old schtick to an audience of uninterested Royalists and, of course, the box of yawning Royals themselves. Let me tell you, there’s no boredom purer than Royal boredom.

Even ITV realised that they’d backed the donkey on this one and so I’m watching the sunday morning repeat. Much better odds when it’s up against the god botherers rather than Eurovision.
Picture © BBC

Well, my birthday came and went and so did the sun. It felt like the start of summer: the hobgob garden packed with people, the smell of the barbecue, some mellow tunes and the flustered whinging of the people in the queue for the food. Happy memories came flooding back, but at the same time it really felt like time for a change. It wasn’t stale exactly, just over familiar. Roll-on visa. It’s not just us that have found the bureaucracy tortuous either. The Hallé Orchestra have cancelled a tour to the States because of the Herculean requirements of the visa application process.

Renew your passport in May, win 10 years of independence from The Iron Heel

Never forget the BNP are a bunch of racist, fascistic bastards. Please.
All of the political parties have suddenly realised that the BNP have become a viable threat and so this week the BNP have been getting a lot of publicity. So, it is very important to remind everyone, at every opportunity, that the BNP are a nasty bunch of bastards and that fascism is not, was not, and will never be a good thing. The fact that asian people in East London are talking about supporting the BNP shows that this simple message is not getting through. And as for the Greek-Armenian candidate “Sharif Abdel Gawad” – you sir are either stupid and deluded, ignorant and deluded or just deluded. What the fucking fuck do you think the BNP are all about ?
I’m against banning them, and I’m against censoring them, and so I’m consequently heavily in favour of pointing out to everyone, at every opportunity, what an evil bunch of bastards they are.

My dad and I were talking about this earlier today and we agreed that the older generations were able to be convinced that the BNP were not voteworthy by association with the Nazis and the Fascists. But as the older generations die off, what if people forget and start believing all of the old, simple, lies about “trains running on time” etc ? What if fascism starts sounding credible and reasonable! Everyone who is horrified by this idea needs to take action NOW!

This morning, whilst lying in the bath, I was flicking through an old Blakes 7 book. Towards the end of the book are a few interviews with actors, writers and production staff about their B7 experiences that I’d not read before. One of them was by the guy who did the voices for the various computers (Zen, Orac and Slave) throughout all 4 series. Now, I’m sure he’s a lovely bloke, but he really came across as the architypal old queen luvvy. Linda Smith may have also pointed out his cravat as further evidence of this, but she’s sadly not around any more…and I didn’t know her or anything…so on reflection it’s very unlikely…anyway…

His interview was peppered with some wonderful luvvyisms like:

I’ve toured, Ive done the West End in revue, I’ve touched nearly every branch of the business. For example I worked with Noel Coward, and I worked for Peter Hall…

you get the picture.

But the last paragraph is something very special:

…I had a letter from a woman who said what a marvellous character I made of Zen and how upset she was that he died – her little girl couldn’t sleep afterwards and cried over Zen saying, ‘I failed you’. Then when I went to a convention last year a little girl in a wheelchair asked how I felt when Zen died […] I went down to speak to her later and found this was the same little girl who had cried all night when Zen died. I had no idea that she was a cripple. It was very moving for me.

Now, I’m sure some people would find no humour at all in that. Personally I nearly had an accident laughing; which, as I was in the bath at the time, would have been most unpleasant.