Wheeeeee

Here we go again...

2009-10-03T16:40:43Z

Return to Indie

2009-08-20T23:05:30Z

I scouted about a little bit today on the Internet and found a wonderful site containing bundles of jangle.

Here's a sample, of some Germans who clearly like anoraks and fanzines, but aren't too impressed with the recent crop of boy bands with guitars that all look like David Brent's disciple* from The Office and have Media Studies A levels.

komakinomag.de/mikrofisch/10%20The%20Kids%20Are%20All%20Shite.mp3

Favourite line: "I bet you look good on the dancefloor - but nowhere else".

The entire site is at: hypem.com/#/list/78. I must admit I had no idea that C86 was still going strong, but I am absolutely delighted that it is. Fundamentally, it's the bedroom band movement, so it will always be going strong, but I honestly thought that people had stopped buying cheap guitars and Dr rhythm drum machines.

Happy day :-)

*The one that got off with baby spice in the end.

The Delicious NHS

2009-08-15T01:01:01Z

I must say, it fucks me off when people whine on and on about x or y hospital and how that establishment shortened their life by a million years. I have had nothing seriously bad to say about the NHS in my entire life.

A junior houseman - paid less than I am now - had to tell me my dad was dead.
A clinician - certainly paid less than I am now - had to explain to me that my mum's oxygen saturation was lower than the usual survivable level (basically because I followed the rescus team into the room and refused to leave whilst they were working).
I was misdiagnosed with acute appendicitis on the way to Barnet General, and then passed my kidney stone in their obs ward unattended, but at the time I could hear the fight taking place in A&E.
A ward sister at Hillingdon cured my mum's thirty-year old ulcer issue by explaining that there are such things as Complex Wound Clinics, which cost GPs a packet, but which actually work. Two years on, my mum has no ulcer. GPs are evidently profit-motivated, which rather fucks in the face of the NHS.

Bottom line, I suppose, is that I am saying that Dan Hannan and all his nasty little MEP buddies can fuck right off. We have no need for you, what with you looking like a lighthouse with a tie on. Also, how dare you go to the USA and peddle your nasty, "I want a consultancy" bullshit in front of their media. MEPs are renowned for their inability to be MPs; what sort of arsehole would consider an MEP an authority.

Oh - of course - Fox News. Home of the worthless right wing fucktard. I watched the interview. At one point, the "interviewer" even said "I read the Daily Mail and it said"...

Rather like saying "as I was standing in the Royal Mall, masturbating as the Queen went past".

It's nice to know that all the fucking idiots of the world are gathering together for a collection of massive fucking idiot Woodstocks, I leave you with one final point.

Is it a bit worrying that we will have no Hunter S Thompson for the internet generation? Most folk of the internet are now dads, or granddads, so they'll be scared to post their actual opinions on the internet - let alone say that Dan Hannan is a big stupid cockknocker - in case their kids detect it, or they get sued for expressing an opinion .

This is a shame - I think the right of an individual (say, me) to call another individual (say, Dan Hannan) a big stupid cockknocker, ought to be enshrined in law so our children can safely insult our peers. Let's face it, we only survived Thatcher thanks to Spitting Image. If we'd had to regard her as a human being, we'd have all killed ourselves.

Was she a human being, btw? I was never told. I heard something about an Alzheimer's Robot... Still, nice to see her family turned out well. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

John Hughes, RIP

2009-08-09T21:03:16Z

The folk of Shermer, Illinois were in mourning this weekend, with the news of the death of John Hughes last Thursday. Neo-maxi zoom dweebies everywhere (self included) reacted to the news by re-watching Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Bueller, Sixteen Candles, Uncle Buck, Planes Trains & Automobiles and Some Kind of Wonderful more or less back to back (but not Home Alone, Maid in Manhattan or Curly Sue).

Poor bugger was only 59, and given that he stopped working in about 1994 in order to be a family man, I guess he must have made the right choice.

Shamelessly sentimental though he was, he leaves behind a body of work that is the seminal depiction of teen angst (albeit at a time when everyone had Farrah-hair). He didn't make the best teen movie ever (that accolade going to Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing), but The Breakfast Club is clearly the most iconic.

Jeffrey Archer remains resolutely alive, leading greater credence to the theory that God doesn't exist, or is a total misery.

Harry Potter and the Wait for the DVD if you're a Completist

2009-07-20T00:52:16Z

What a humungous pile of horseshit. Just walked back from Uxbridge after seeing this, and thought I could save people some cash.

You don't need to see it, even if you love the books or the films. None of the more interesting elements are included, and Harry is made to look like a complete coward at the close. Fair enough, the body-bind deus ex in the book is rather contrived, but the idea that he would simply skulk in the shadows listening to Dumbledore being killed is ludicrous. Oh, and Snape can teleport - that's how hacked the scenes were.

It's long enough that I dozed off twice, so how it was possible to miss so many important elements - the problem between Tonks & Lupin, the theme of Harry starting to properly fancy Ginny - I really don't know. Perhaps it was the fact that every three minutes we had to be reminded that Draco was trying to get the vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirement working. He puts an apple in it - it comes out as a partly eaten apple. He puts a bird in it - it comes out as a dead bird. He travels back in time and puts Laika the Soviet Dog in it, who comes back out as burlesque dancer Dita van Teese. Christ on a cracker. All we needed to know was that he was up to something, and becoming increasingly stressed about it.

As for the "Katie Bell Gets A Present" episode - at what point was it decided that the road between Hogsmeade and Hogwarts is somewhere in the wastes of Siberia? It's just a country path, in the snow. And WHY does Luna discover Harry due to his radiating the weird shit that only she believes in? The point of that whole strand is JK mocking the anti-Dawkins lobby, and it should have been left in for sharp-eyed adults accompanying their kids. I do think the girl who plays Luna is superb in the role, but there's no way she should replace Tonks at the beginning.

I knew things were going truly awry when the boy drank ALL of the luck virus (sorry, potion) before setting off to get Slughorn's memories. This meant we were not going to get a single frame of combat in the castle after Dumbledore dies. And that's where I started to nod off. The whole dungeon bit where they recover the locket was doubtless excruciatingly detailed, but I slept through it. And their reason for being in the Astronomy tower afterwards - none, that I could make out. Rosmerta hadn't directed them there; there was no Dark Mark over Hogwarts - because there was no fight taking place. So there was no reason for Malfoy, and latterly the Death Eaters to go there and expect Dumbledore to be present.

And finally, when I thought it couldn't get any worse, there was the finale. No sombre funeral with Harry breaking down as he has to tell Ginny it is over until Voldemort is finished - rather, a moment from a Chris De Burgh concert in Amsterdam in 1998 when, led by McGonagall, all the wizards of Hogwarts hold their lighters (sorry, wands) over their heads and the power of their LURVE dispels Bonham-Carter's Dark Mark from the sky.

And then the final finale - H, R & H stand at a window, peering out at Dumbledore's phoenix (which doesn't explode at all), and they joke about the fact that wherever he's going, they're going too. The camera pulls back, the DP looks at the frame rate with which this is done in Empire Strikes Back, and precisely NOT the same effect is achieved. Homage noted; total botch of homage also noted.

Expensive drivel.

Top Plastic Surgeons Announce Breakthrough

2009-06-26T18:47:26Z

Following the death of Michael Jackson, it has been announced by surgeons working at the Mercy Me Hospital in Potluck, Idaho, that they will be able to get a new Jackson up and working by the end of the month. Elspeth Merkin, speaking for the hospital, said "most of the plans for Jackson are stored in the hospital's mainframe. We just need to patch the pieces together over a plastic endoskeleton, feed in some old hits, and press go. The new one won't even need a gold bed or any monkeys."

Upcoming Tube Strike

2009-06-05T18:40:28Z

I recently sent the following enquiry to the RMT union. Oddly, I have had no reply.

"I wonder if you could please confirm of deny a slightly startling thing I heard on the news just now. I gather from London Tonight that Tube drivers are paid, on average, £40,000 a year.

I'm paid considerably less than that to manage all the data for a secondary school. Now, whilst I realise that it isn't easy to compare apples and oranges, I'm starting to wonder whether, instead of undertaking a degree level education, and then following it up with ten years plus of learning about data management, programming, systems analysis and the rest, I should instead have concentrated my energies on learning how to hold on to a lever for eight hours without falling asleep too often, read the Daily Mirror, and eat crisps. I think I could manage crisp eating as I am, but the lever holding might take me hours of study."

UKIP Voters Confused by Sheet of Paper

2009-06-05T17:13:13Z

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8084086.stm

Evidently voters in Yorkshire are outraged that they couldn't see the UKIP box because it was on part of the ballot paper that was folded under.

Tells us more about UKIP voters than paper folding, I suspect - and serves UKIP right for having a name that comes alphabetically last. As any taxi service knows, you've got to call yourself the "AAAAAAA000001 Party" to achieve ballot-paper preeminence.

New Smarter Internet

2009-05-03T10:42:56Z

I'm quite excited about this:

blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/05/wolframalpha-is-coming/

Evidently it's sort of a browser, but if you type "how tall is Mount Everest" you get information about mount Everest, maps, diagrams, related information, and no porn adverts.

Even better - if you type 50 cent, you get information about currency - it doesn't understand pikey or gangsta.

My only concern, naturally, is that when Mr Wolfram gets mega-rich he should be dissuaded from ever teaming up with a guy called Hart.

People - Meh

2009-05-02T09:47:58Z

More or less a year to the day that the house next door to me collapsed resulting in a man's death, the proprietor is on site working, with his six and eight year old grand-daughters in tow. Unbelievable. And not a hard hat or safety cage in sight.

"Come on, kids, let's go and play on the building site where great-uncle P was crushed to death!"

"Yaaay!"

Off to the USA

2009-03-31T21:41:36Z

on Friday. Those of you who can be arsed might wish to look up MozOnHoliday on YouTube, as I might be posting little clips up there when I can find WiFi. However, since the point is to have a holiday, I wouldn't be surprised if nothing appears. Oddly, part of the fun has been laying the groundwork, though.

Camera: check
Car to 240volt beer-can: check
Multi-power adapter: awaiting delivery
320GB portable hard drive: check
Vast numbers of 16gb memory cards: check
Crappy MacBook that won't recognise its own battery: check

All part of the preparation fun; I've spent the past few evenings uploading my CDs onto Mac and iPod. Also joyous - finally an excuse to do so, and to skip the CDs I really shouldn't have bought.

I'll be thinking of you all in your offices as I cruise through Arizona with the top down, drinking Coors chilled by the air-con. Just not that much...

Zack and Miri Make a Porno / The Quantum Solace

2009-03-30T20:48:35Z

More Jersey-esque fodder from K. Smith, but without any too overt Red Bank references (except the Monroeville Zombies hockey team).

A comfortable flick, with all the dick and fart jokes we've come to expect, but more proof positive - if such were needed since he's said so himself on many occasions - that the guy's a big fucking softie.

This is the perfect flick for women who like to swear and fart in the bath to go and have a good weep at; sure, there's a lot of un-necessary nudity, but the nice, relatively reliable guy gets the girl at the end (as you might expect). It's Ron Jeremy directs Breakfast Club, in pitch language.

-------------------------------------------------

More "I can hit people faster even than Matt Daaaaamon" fodder from the new Bond franchise people. Bond is cross. He has the hump. Yup, we get it. He's very tight lipped, a little sardonic, and apparently nearly as drunk as Fleming used to write him. His boss is still Queen Elizabeth out of Shakespeare in Love, and she sort of fancies him - there's no other explanation for the length of his leash. Ewww.

Very enjoyable film, but you really must switch your brain off. Otherwise you'd be shouting "AQUIFER" every three minutes during the denouement. Water doesn't simply live underground in caves like in Dune. Frank Herbert was no geologist - neither are these numpties.

Spectacular sequences galore, though I think they're starting to over-use the free running, and surviving impossibly hard collisions schtick. T'would be nice to have the next one with a bit more of a trad evil overlord in space, or in a volcano; interesting minions, and maybe take a chance on the next beautiful sidekick turning out to be a useless WAG for a change. The last standard WAG, from memory, was Britt Ekland in "Powerful Weapon", so it'd be post-post-modern to have a titted ditz as a sidekick.

What is the point of teenagers?

2009-01-10T01:09:59Z

I just watched a couple of videos from "the olden days", namely Nirvana at Reading and Daisy Chainsaw on The Word. It struck me that the modern teen rebellion (i.e. stabbing each other) is a bit crap, really. We've done it all. There's little more to do, and nothing whatsoever that could shock me. As Bill Hicks sagely pointed out, we've done all your drugs.

So what can teenagers rebel against? There isn't a lot left. Mods used to head for Brighton with bike chains, only to meet Rockers on the A23 armed with shotguns. So knife crime is a bit tiresome, but hardly worrying. Drug dealers these days buy Uzis - they used to use bayonets. Either tool, if used, = dead - it hasn't actually become "worse".

I guess what I'm thinking is that we are told by the press that "kids today" are far more "worser" than we were as kids. I got a Saturday when I was ten for throwing fireworks at a mate of mine (who was throwing fireworks at me). Problem was - we were in school uniform. One didn't bring the school into disrepute (especially a Junior school). And - of course - stuff blowing up is cool. Yes, a banger could take your hand off, but only if you gripped said banger really tightly and waited for it to go off. Chemical reaction / confined space etc. Our P5 science guy told us a lot of useful information about blowing things up.

It does rather wind me up when people generalise about qualifications these days being easier to get than they were when I was at school - obviously hom. sap. can't have become less clever - but I was very disturbed to see the C6 Maths book (studied by current sixth formers pursuing Further Maths A levels). All the material in it was either "Modern Maths" which I did at O level in Y11, or calculus, which I did at O level in Y10 (fourth year). I'm therefore forced to the agonising conclusion that school maths HAS become easier to raise the self-esteem of the numpties.

This in itself is pointless. What actually needs to be done is an accommodation of the less academically able so that they (a) fit in at school, and (b) learn something that will be of some use to them in later life. Religious Studies and such are really NOT useful to these people. Plumbing, carpentry, fitness training - all more helpful. We need to honestly acknowledge that not everybody is capable of winning the next Nobel prize for Physics, and steer the national curriculum away from that idiocy. By so doing, we'll end up with kids who can't be arsed to join gangs, because they're really interested in their school training to become, say, a sound engineer. Computer programmers - likewise - I learned all the algebra required to be a programmer in the first term of Y7. After that, the maths I learned has been unnecessary to this day. It's nice to know that a rectangle is two triangles, and that a rhombus can be formed by leaning on a square, but practical application = 0.

I do like the current school's approach to the kids' leaving time, though. They can go home at any time after the last lesson, as long as it's before 19:00. This lets a lot of kids hang around the basketball hoops in the playground. My young padawan asked why they don't go home - easy answer - the nearest available BB hoops are in the local park, where they'll be offered out for fights. School is safe from that sort of nonsense.

Well, I've enjoyed ranting. Drifted utterly from my original thesis, but then this is blog-land, and I assert my right to ramble, like the folk in Derby in the late forties on their mass trespass of Kinder Scout.

Writer's Block: Long Nights, Short Poems

2008-12-22T01:27:11Z

It's the winter solstice in the Northern hemisphere, summer solstice in the Southern hemisphere, and Haiku Day in the U.S. Does that inspire you to write a three-line poem with five syllables in the first and last lines and seven in the middle line?

View 500 Answers

Prayer mat, skull cap
Bow to the same holy dude
Try to be nicer

or

States embraces Yule
as way of not espousing
pagan tolerance

Tchernabyelo's meme

2008-11-29T02:08:32Z

Here's my annotated response:

1. Started your own blog.
2. Slept under the stars (waiting for the Perseids)
3. Played in a band. (Lead singer/guitarist in two).
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower (Perseids as above)
6. Given more than you can afford to charity (sponsored a library in India whilst drunk – no regrets).
7. Been to Disneyland (Euro)
8. Climbed a mountain (Many)
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo (lead singer as per 3 – many)
12. Visited Paris (not difficult really)
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea (only if the lightning is at sea and I’m watching it).
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch (is guitar playing an art?)
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning (Waitrose fishcakes)
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables (spuds – vegetable? Presumably not animal or mineral)
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France (yep – it’s shit. Grimy, dark, over-rated picture).
20. Slept on an overnight train (how many do you want? St Pancras to Luton, Bedford, and once to Sheffield, all whilst trying to get to Borehamwood after the pub).
21. Had a pillow fight (aboard a narrowboat – extra points for specialism?)
22. Hitch hiked (natch – not allowed to get to the old Stonehenge festivals any other way).
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill. (Who hasn’t?)
24. Built a snow fort (using a selection of huge snowballs)
25. Held a lamb (by necessity – stupid bloody Herdwick got its head stuck in my fence, and I had to restrain it from hurting itself whilst removing its horns from the fencing.)
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse (Technically no. I’ve been UNDER a total eclipse, but the sky was completely overcast)
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset (Six consecutive times during the same “day”, Glastonbury 1992. No point fucking about wasting decent drugs by going to bed.)
31. Hit a home run (I’ll take this as meaning as a six in cricket. Back over the bowler’s head, Uxbridge Colts, 1978.)
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors. (Fulham. It isn’t far.)
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language (Visual Basic 3)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied (When I was 17).
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke (the male part of “Summer Nights” from “Grease” done in the style of Tom Waits, thoroughly irritating the woman singing the “Sandy” part, who was under the impression she could sell a song).
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant. (Well, I was IN a restaurant and saw a homeless guy outside, so I took him some food. He said “I don’t want that shit. Haven’t you got some money for me.” Isn’t Crack wonderful).
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight (Ooh. Hard one).
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling
52. Kissed in the rain (Julie Powell, Aberystwyth, 1986. Fantastic.)
53. Played in the mud (Julie Powell, Aberystwyth, 1986. Very similar).
54. Gone to a drive-in theatre (There’s no such thing. I’ve been to drive-in movie theatre).
55. Been in a movie. (Extra in The Monocled Mutineer. Almost in “The Killing of Sister George” with Beryl Reid, since she was filming it, pissed, outside my auntie’s house in Hammersmith, and I ran into shot, age 6. Beryl apparently slurred “keep him in, darling”, but I have no evidence of same.)
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business. (A shit IT business. I’m no businessman. It failed).
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason (there's never any reason to buy flowers).
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma (A Neg)
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check. (Only in the proper sense of the word, in that I’ve passed a cheque I knew would bounce to a landlord. This is a perfectly normal part of “being working class”).
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favourite childhood toy (Who hasn’t? I still have my bear, Fred, who was my mum’s bear beforehand).
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square (having a fag, looking for prostitutes. Very few around).
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job (BBC researcher, for libelling a Tory. Proud moment).
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London (Probably as a child. My folks used to suck up to the “royal” family.
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person (From the NORTH side – the only proper way. South side’s just for tourists).
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car (Smart. Same price used - £3.99)
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper. (Usual local paper shit. Swam 5000m age 9)
85. Read the entire Bible (age 8 – early nerd training- lots of begatting in the middle)
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (Trout. Quite bony. Stopped wriggling after I whacked it in the face with an oar.)
88. Had chickenpox (Age 33. No fun at all.)
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury (for precisely ten minutes until panel dismissed on a technicality. Sat in a room with a bunch of irritating people for two weeks, though. Very worthwhile).
91. Met someone famous (Interviewed Miki Berenyi from Lush).
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one (Too many to count, and rising, unfortunately).
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit. (Been in a suit in front of a lawyer. Does that count? What is a law suit?)
98. Owned a cell phone (Not actually USED one though - people call ME on it occsionally). When did this questionnaire originate?
99. Been stung by a bee (Still waiting for anaphylaxis).
100. Read an entire book in one day (Several hundred. Most Moorcock books last little longer than a good shit).

The Oddly Trifurcated Nation Decides

2008-11-04T00:18:45Z

Who would YOU vote for?

Lando Calrissian or Homer Simpson?

It's a toughie...

I think the decider for me was when Palin confirmed she could see Russia from her house. Scenario A - the neighbours build a gazebo and have visible sex inside. BOOM. No need for scenario B; world ended.

You WILL be offended by this!

2008-11-01T03:36:15Z

Pick up your phone. Dial 123.

You will hear "Hi! This is Tinkerbell! At the third bell it will be 4 30 and 20 seconds."

Read to you by some ghastly Californian teen.

Now, I'm as unpatriotic as the next person, but fuck this. We might as well hire people from Encino to do the Archers, like, totally. It has to go, and it has to go soon.

Shit at being in touch

2008-09-19T21:01:31Z

That's me, that is. This is not a good month for being me. Today is the 11th on the bounce that I've been at work for at least ten hours a day, and there are another seven to go - I kno this because I've told my boss I'm having next weekend off even if the world is about to end.

After that, they can stew in their own juices. 7am to 4pm is for work - the rest is for hobbies.

Sorry for not being in touch - I'm Nonesuch-level-grumpy, and SeaOfCats-level-awkward at present.

The Big Read Book List

2008-07-08T18:26:44Z

I've no idea how to make things pop up from inside a post, so:

The Big Read Book list
Passing on from mhw

I've just deleted the ones I haven't read and put the rest in order. 49/100 - poor. See, er, a library.

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
34 Emma - Jane Austen
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
6 The Bible
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
75 Ulysses - James Joyce

My bloody assistant again

2008-06-23T23:18:29Z

Martha Jones she ain't. My assistant doesn't know what "incompetent" means.

True story. Really.

Trouble is, I'm not sure what bit of comedy this fits under. I expect her to be incredibly stupid, so her lack of knowledge is far from ironic.

She's not dyslexic, so it's not the "evil will be found out" laugh on me.

I've a horrible feeling she's going for 20's Pathos. Original, cringe-worthy "I wasn't taught properly because I had to eat a shoe and then I was tied to railway lines until I was 16" type funny. But since she went to a selective all-girls' school, that's rubbish too.

Only alternative: she simply is precisely as stupid as advertised. Which I can't actually cope with. How is it possible to be 21, monumentally stupid AND never to have encountered the word incompetent? Surely during five years of employment, "incompetent" must have come up at some point? There ought to be letters of dismissal with the word printed thereon many times.

Yet she's a tremendously generous, enthusiastic human who gets on with everyone at work. Crush spirit? Do half her job for her? The Pips dichotomy again. Nonesuch knows...

I'm doing half her job, because I'm a mug. But how do I make her literate?

A Gift For Dickie

2008-06-16T07:25:11Z

This is one of those endearingly crazy and entirely right-minded things they actually invented the internet to accomplish. It's probably doomed to failure, and it's probably a completely stupid thing to do, but I think it's bloody brilliant. And it stands a strong chance of making an old man cry.

Have a look at www.agiftfordickie.com and see if you concur - and if, like me, you spent your childhood watching Lionel Jefferies going to the moon in a sea-mine, I'm sure you'll want to join in. As I posted on the companion Facebook site, this is one of those things that is tremendously "small-e" english - like "Passport to Pimlico", greaseproof paper, duck-ponds, or leading a glorious cavalry charge into a volcano.

And, like scrumping, it would be sad if we stopped doing those things because of pragmatism - or, god forbid - realism.

(Also, for the sceptics out there - I know the organisers, and it isn't a scam).

Writer's Block: Goblin for a day.

2008-05-31T22:27:52Z

Let's say you're a hobgoblin for 24 hours. What sort of havoc would you wreak?

Or:

If a baby of unknown origins suddenly fell into your care, would you keep it? What would you name it?

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Assuming we are talking folkloric template shamanic hobgoblin here, I'd probably start by raising an army of Kobolds from the mines of the Schwarzwald. Tired and shagged out after all the shouting I'd have to do, I'd then send the wee army to terrorise Bracknell (it has it coming), and take the opportunity to have a bit of a kip.

Recharged, I'd suck all the spells out of the Codex of Noob, Willow-style, and mount a singlehanded assault on Chequers, flying on an enchanted otter. Once in command, I'd fix Gordon Brown's disturbing lower jaw, and then have him summon Ed Balls, sniggering each time the man's name is said.

Balls. Heh.

After slicing off the top of Balls' head (to say thankyou for the DCSF), I'd dine on Minister of Education dippy brain egg, with finger soldiers, take in a show - maybe Les Mis - before nipping down to China Whites, and have fun making all the WAGs real noses/boobs* come back, and making their IQs appear forever in letters of fire above their heads.

*Courtesy of Addams Family 2. Can't mess with the classics.

Largely Incommunicado

2008-05-19T21:56:42Z

Insane busyness. I'm all about the busy.

Last week, some really nasty crap broke loose at school - so unpleasant that it's sub-judice and I shan't be babbling about it on a website. Result - lots of extra work to deal with problems, on top of the summer census and a new school year, cuz ours moves on in May.

Then Friday, Ofsted called.

Means little to non-teachers, but to the pedagogues of the world Ofsted is like Voldemort. Reduces normally panicky educators into a state of manic frenzy, like trapped animals gnawing their own legs off.

As a result, I had to hie back from All Tomorrow's Parties* in Minehead on Sunday morning at six, ears still ringing from a blistering Dinosaur Jr set, and do a day's work. Just three fourteen hour days to go now.

So, sorry if I've been out of touch for a time. Spending time either at work or asleep.

*Explosions in the Sky & Okkervil River also marvellous standout gigs, and I had candyfloss and played on the 2p slot machines. ATP programme descriptions of bands were more pretentious than Brian Sewell at a Tapas bar drinking Lapsang Souchong and reading about the Turner prize. Quotes will follow as a warning to those with keyboards as to how not to commit the crime of "writingness"**.

**Coined by my college ex to describe writers who are too aware that they are writing. You can usually picture the type holding a nosegay and giggling condescendingly into a silk hankie.

I am a big fat nerd

2008-05-08T20:48:07Z

No news there. But I'm really proud of the contrivance I have in my study now. FOUR monitors, like proper writers* have. And the noisiest thing in the room is my laptop**.

Caveat, however, for folk lusting after really quiet PCs. I bought myself a Tranquil PC as a backup server. Very cool - looks like a bit of hi-fi. Cost about £400 (including Windows Home Server).

I subsequently bought myself the cheapest PC Dell do as my working machine - about £140 - just to see if it would be OK. It's no noisier than the server - in fact, the server's disk drives are more audible. Obviously had to add graphics cards to get the four monitors to happen, but I already had a pair of fanless twinheads (256 & 64), so no bonus noise there.

I imagined the heat of today would be the big test - but the PC fan just idles thanks to "only" being a 1.8ghz dual core. It might be a different story if I were gaming - then again, I'd have to have three of the monitors off, leaving the 256meg card with just one thing to drive. And I play PC games about once a month.

Conclusion - you too can have a near-silent, fully backed-up four monitor system for about £800 from scratch. Cheapest Dell PC, four of the cheapest Dell widescreens, two fanless twinheads, networked USB HDD. I'd suggest you get one umpty card - at least 256meg - but monitors 3 & 4 are just going to sit there with word or e-mail on them, so 64meg is entirely adequate. Point is, EVERYTHING that is now available in PC land is bleeding edge - unless you're a polygon freak, or you do CAD for the Space Shuttle programme.

One tip, though. When you get the PC, destroy Vista and install XP SP2. There are drivers for it and everything. My two year old graphics cards had no chance of working with Vista - none at all. Also, the only thing I could see that had changed between Vista and XP was I no longer knew where anything was.

What a boring post. Still, hope it's useful info to somebody.

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*Not that I'm a writer at all. I have fancy ideas about writing, and enjoy words, but I'm too lazy to finish a story - and too unskilled to construct a plot. I get as far as "it would be funny if x happened", and I'm entirely happy with the vignettes I write from time to time, but I never work out where x could occur, who could be affected, and how to resolve it all. As my chemistry teacher used to try to explain (usually with lines during detention) "Introduction, Method, Outcome, Conclusion". Or something. Can't remember. Still - he got me an O level, so he can't have been a complete idiot.

**My own stupid fault. I bought a gamers' laptop about three years ago because it had a "must have" resolution of 1920 x 1200 (ideal for school timetabling , which I no longer have to do). As a result it also has a really hot graphics card which the fans have to cool constantly - curiously even when the monitor is in standby.

Nobody's done this week's Doctor Who (spoilers)

2008-05-06T08:37:24Z

I was waiting for a review... (Usual Nonesuch "critical of stuff one loves" caveats apply to the below)

Colour me puzzled. Is there something funny going on in the heads of the DW writers, or is it me?

1. The probic vent is used to KILL Sontarans. Why bother with just knocking them out? Getting a bit tired of all this "let's not go round stabbing each other" PC rubbish. Need my TV heroes to be a bit more like Giles in Buffy - always does the decent thing, but underneath, he's capable of being a complete bastard when the need arises. (See also 6).

2. UNIT's spaceship. Do I need to say more? Maybe I do. Making a wind is fine and dandy, but where was it getting the fresh air from? Space?

3. Clones of people always have to try to kill one another. Those are just the rules. No bonding; no tearful farewells. Jean-Claude Van Damme knows the score on the matter.

4. Why didn't anyone point out that simply LAUNCHING all the world's nuclear missiles would destroy the planet? None would need to land - the combined output of 18,000 Space Shuttle launches simultaneously would bring about a nuclear winter faster than you can say "unlimited rice pudding".

5. Too much shouting.

6. The "coming soon trailer". Doctor Who is Buffy's dad? Why? I'm not sure if it is wise to tease nerds such as myself with such a wish-fulfillment fantasy. Comic-book crossovers seldom end well, and even if it is just a cack-handed homage, I can see it all ending in tears. It could possibly be redeemed if the writers have Buffy Who rip out a massive fart after doing her laser beam gymnastics, a la Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Otherwise, DW is not Buffy, and (thank goodness) it is not Torchwood. It doesn't need a big fighty character (yes Leela, I mean you). The whole point is that problems are solved with what the Greeks called metis. Odysseus (the archetype for the Doctor) doesn't spend much time beating vampires about the head - he uses cunning to floor his foes. That's why we like him more than we like Achilles - who is basically Grant Mitchell in a skirt.

I seem to have wandered from the initial brief...