Blog On The Motorway Swan diving off the tongues of crippled giants

Its about 4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth.

Ah the perils of modern life.  Imagine you are a pop star so utterly damaged as to be unable to make your own decisions any further, and your money mad parents thrust you back into the limelight while you are clearly still struggling with serious mental problems. 

You stride around, that ever so vacant look in your eyes evident to everyone but the celebrity obsessed magazines, and the adoring fans desperate to have you back.  You don't have access to your kids, or indeed to anyone other than your minders, there to totally block any access to the real world that you might have.

Not a pleasant life, maybe, but at least you get to pour out banality through your twitter account, all kittens and clouds and cutesy child friendly nothingness.  It makes you smile, your own little idyll of comfortable nothingness.  Then one day you wake up and found that someone has hacked into said twitter account, and left the following message:

"HI Yall! Brit Brit here, just wanted to update you all on the size of my vagina. Its about 4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth."

Brilliant.  Another day ruined.

Nothing to say

I am very very bored at work, but this has left me in the profoundly rubbish situation of having nothing profound, or yet even mildly interesting to say, and yet I feel the best way to pass my time between now and half five is to blog. Bah.

I very much doubt that I will be back on here before the birthday of that fella who did the thing with the nails that time, so let me rejoice in saying to you all, a very merry (insert your holiday title here) to one and all, may your days be merry and bright. And may all your Christmases be devoid of Adam Sandler.

Incandescent Rage

I was in a bit of a quandary tonight as to what to write about, so three cheers for Google News, which pointed me in the direction of this link, about the story of the utterly terrible Christmas Grotto that fleeced several families out of money for what appears to have been the tourist equivalent of a kick in the shins.

But the real prize here is my first gander at the website of the world's most horrifying car crash of a news organisation, The Sun.  For the last few years, this bilge merchant rag of right wing sensibilities and self proclaimed Bastion of Britishness has been going on a steady decline towards a putrid stench of base hostility, whipping up fervour and hate about just about any topic you can care to mention, and their website appears to be a truly comedic foray into interactive hateful ranting.  You cannot click a link without having your expert advice solicted on race, sexuality, crime, punishment, or indeed Lego Terrorists.

What makes this all the more laughable is the extent of histrionic ranting and self important posturing that such solicitation results in.  These lunatics give the mental asylum known as the BBC's Have Your Say a run for their money.  Not content in simply asking opinion, however, the Sun makes their questions so horrifyingly leading as to render any participation meaningless.

For instance, a poll that asks about the Shannon Matthews trial, where the parents of a small child have today been found guilty of kidnapping their own child and keeping her hidden to claim a ransom, asks for opinions on the verdict.  Now, firstly, I doubt that there's anyone out there who would come down on the side of the parents in this case, but printing (in bold capitals) 'Guilty: Do evil duo deserve a life of pain behind bars?' is hardly hiding how you expect the discussion to go, is it?

Of the comments inside, some of my favourites include:

• "Give me a room, give me a bat.....and just 5 minutes of their time...."
• "Forget about life sentence and waste more of my money and others. Hang them and bury them once and for all"
• Or the impressively punctuated "the fact dat dey are found guilty and sentenced will be a lesson for other scumbag like dem irrespective of how long their sentence is, but its high time d govt scrap dis benefit stuff, it made people who are fit to work to be too lazy."
• Or my real favourite; "That's what happen to scumbags who lives on state benefits and refuses to work!!! They have denied the real people in need of help!! Carry on these single mums who think the more kids they have the more ££ they get!! Well it's true under this crap ZanuLabour government." Which I can only imagine is copied and pasted by into every forum on the site, so general are its targets.

All of this has the strange effect of making me feel a lot better about my life.  Weird.

It's all gone a bit Brooker

As I mentioned yesterday, the wonderful Charlie Brooker has become rather omnipresent in my life at the moment.  Not that I'm complaining, and I am at fault for this a little in that as well as watching and reading everything that comes along, I am re-reading Dawn Of The Dumb again.

But imagine my delight this morning as my Google Reader provided me with not just two new articles by the man of billious venom, but also this, courtesy of 'The Internet, Now In Handy Book Form.'

Excellent.

Today's the day

Nano Count = 7111

Well, today is the day that we find out whether America has decided to move forwards or backwards.  I don't really have much to say other than I am really excited, i've taken half the day off tomorrow, and I will be glued to my seat throughout the night.

Good luck Barack.  My spidey sense tells me you're going to need it.

Nano Total = 3353

Blimey, it's been a while.  Sorry for being away for so long, and Joe, sorry for not replying.  I hope you are too doing Nano.  Well, day one has gone spectacularly well, and I have already done my word count for today and tomorrow, and have finished my first chapter.

I had forgotten just how much fun it was.

I will blog more soon but I am a bit written out at the moment.

Feeling Hamletty

"I have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" - Hamlet, William Shakespeare.

Yes, I am having one of those days.  Had a phenomenally lovely weekend and the return to work has gotten me in this kind of mood.

Back to normality.

Well, after about a week of setting up, tweaking, installing, uninstalling and threatening physical violence against a reasonably inanimate object, I have finally gotten my computer set up at Ellen's.  The only thing left to do now is to install Google Chrome, although I haven't fully decided to do that yet.

The main problem I was having was the lack of sound eminating from the PC, no matter what I tried.  At Jonic's behest I finally crumbled and got a new sound card.  Which I then utterly failed to install properly, and the gorram thing wouldn't tell me what I had done wrong.  Eventually though, I conquered all, and celebrated last night by watching The Culture Show Metallica Special on iPlayer.  Now though, I have gotten my Last.fm back online, and shall start to scrobble away with intensity.

So now I really don't have any excuses not to do some writing(apart from a full stack of unread items on my Google Reader), and I find myself re-invigorated and ready to go back to the film script I half abandoned about a year ago.  I showed it to Jonic, who cut it apart mercilessly, but that's what I needed, so here I go...

Without a hint of irony

I am going to re-post an article from Talking Points Memo as I think it just sums up the Republican's sense of unjustified entitlement and lack of self-awareness.

Finely Aged Whine

09.03.08 -- 10:50AM

By Josh Marshall

There's quite a tear-jerking piece in the Post by Howard Kurtz today about the McCain campaign's wailing about the media treatment of their botched veep roll-out ...

Sen. John McCain's top campaign strategist accused the news media Tuesday of being "on a mission to destroy" Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by displaying "a level of viciousness and scurrilousness" in pursuing questions about her personal life.In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels "under siege" by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child's parentage.

...

Schmidt, a former spokesman for President Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, talked openly about his frustrations in an interview with The Washington Post. He said the McCain camp is in the middle of the worst media "feeding frenzy" he has ever seen.

 

Schmidt, by the way, is one of the most hard-boiled GOP operatives and Rove proteges around. I guess he and his McCain colleagues missed the whole Rev. Wright episode, Clinton impeachment episode and, what, maybe twenty other episodes over recent years.

It's also notable that while virtually all the aggressive questioning of Palin has been on her troopergate scandal, her manifest lack of qualifications, ties to a political party that embraces secession, etc. Schmidt focused on stories that if you look closely were actually never written. Yes, there was a storm of speculation on blogs. And maybe reporters followed up with inquiries. But who published any of it? Think about that for a second.

The McCain camp is using the rumors about Palin's family as a cudgel to beat back entirely legitimate questions -- which may amount to a feeding frenzy -- about Palin's political record, alleged pattern of abuse of the power of her office and political associations. When you see Steve Schmidt getting weepy, believe me, you're getting played.

I mean seriously, when you don't vet a candidate in such a visible role, the media is going to do it for you.  The arrogance of the Republicans in thinking they can win over Clinton Voters with a gun-toting creationist pro-life nutbar is simply staggering.  I mean, look at the photo (stolen from Jonic's onehundrenyen lite feed) and tell me whether you really think this woman is going to win over Hillary's base.

News Jiffy

Went for a very enjoyable drinkie with the Jonic last night, although I am suffering the effects a little this morning.  I was tickled to find though, that three of the top 5 most read stories on the BBC News website this morning were:

Man's 'pants' password is changed
Leaking mushroom soup halts plane
Spider forces family out of home

Why look at depressing news stories when you can enjoy the absurdity of life?

I have some writing tasks for work today, which elevates the standard of my day somewhat, no matter that they are just puff pieces (Jaffa Cakes taste test, anyone?) so apologies for the brief post, but anyone requiring something more substantial can look at the last post.  Just stare at it for a bit, it's really long.

*Edited due to colour incompetence.