Blogfather, Dave Winer, is trying to figure out exactly who Clooney is like.
Ahem! I think you'll find I've already answered that one.
Freakishly uncanny is what I call it.
Everything I've ever said will be credited to Dorothy Parker.George Kaufman
Dorothy Parker
Last night, I dreamt I owned a very large silverback gorilla.
Believe me, it's not as good as it sounds. Those chaps can get pretty boisterous. To get some peace and quiet, I had to hide out in the attic amongst a large collection of empty wine bottles.
No doubt Freud would have had a field day. Fortunately, Freud was full of shit.
Kristin Hersh: 'A Loon':
Jen and I have been recording the new BBC2 series The Tudors so that we can watch it all in one go. Jen's mum, on the other hand, has been watching each episode as it airs.
A devout Irish Catholic born and bred, Jen's mum never did much Anglican history at school. Yesterday, she described the latest episode of The Tudors to Jen:
There's this man who's married, but he wants to get a divorce so that he can marry this other woman. So he's going to set up a new church… Oh, but I shouldn't be giving away the story!
Jen reassured her mum that she was pretty sure that the story was a matter of public record.
She then told her mum that I want to eat the pope.
The less often I post new stuff on Gruts, the more comments I receive. I'm not quite sure how to take this. Perhaps it takes a while for my profound observations to sink in.
Please feel free to talk amongst yourselves for a while.
Greetings from sunny Berkshire, where Jen and I are visiting Ann and Bill and their gay dog. Ann has let me use her computer to draw the following important news story to your attention:
BBC: Cats 'killed by flea treatment'
Hundreds of cats may have died because their owners mistakenly treated them with anti-flea products intended for dogs, a study suggests.
The Veterinary Poisons Information Service found that one in 10 cats referred to it had died after being exposed to permethrin. The chemical is used in flea treatments for dogs but is very toxic to cats, said Alex Campbell of VPIS.
That's permethrin. Remember the name: permethrin.
Ann helpfully pointed out that lilies are also deadly to cats. I wonder whether lilies would survive in acidic Pennine soils. It's got to be worth a try.
I should like to apologise publicly and unreservedly to this unknown gentleman, whom I captured digging deep in Camden Market yesterday:
I was simply taking a photograph of the market. I didn't spot what you were up to at the time. It was not my intention to cause you any embarrassment.
But it does kind of serve you right.
As we were going to be travelling down to Ann and Bill's last Friday evening, I gave Jen a lift into work in the morning. Our route to the motorway takes us over the marvellously named Blackstone Edge. The steep, winding road down Blackstone Edge has an almost sheer (and, in the place I am about to describe, unfenced) drop to the right, and a very steep hillside rising to the left.
It was about 06:20 and pitch dark as I rounded one of the blind bends near the top of Blackstone Edge doing about 40mph. Suddenly, five or six sheep lit up in the headlights directly in front of me. They were standing in the middle of the road where they didn't belong, the stupid twats! There was no way I could swerve around them (deadly drop to the right, rock cutting to the left). There was also no way I could brake in time before hitting them. But what the hell, I thought, and slammed on the brakes anyway, putting the car into a controlled skid…
Suddenly, everything went into hyper-slow motion. The sheep blinked stupidly at me as I calculated there would be fewer fatalities if I aimed the car at the sheep on the left, then yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. Jen bellowed something along the lines of golly gosh! Startled, motionless sheep passed either side of the car, as I skidded through their midst and out the other side. No crunches. No blood. No gore. Not even a glancing blow. Jen and I have absolutely no idea how I managed to avoid hitting a single one of the daft sods.
It was like a bullet-time sequence from out of The Matrix.
Only with sheep.
National Geographic: World's Largest Trout Thrives in Mongolia -- For Now
Guardian: What's wrong with homeopathy
Time after time, properly conducted scientific studies have proved that homeopathic remedies work no better than simple placebos. So why do so many sensible people swear by them? And why do homeopaths believe they are victims of a smear campaign? Ben Goldacre follows a trail of fudged statistics, bogus surveys and widespread self-deception.
I find it incredible that people like Ben Goldacre still need to write articles describing the concept of double-blind trials, which show that so-called homeopathic remedies are indistinguishable from placebos.
Goldacre is too polite to point out that the homeopathic concept (I won't dignify it by calling it a theory) of almost infinitely dilute solutions' being able to cure people is pseudoscientific bullshit. Every glass of water we drink contains almost infinitely dilute solutions (and less) of pretty much anything you care to mention. They also contain far, far greater amounts of many other things you might prefer to gloss over—such as Napoleon's last piss.
Which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free.
They Might Be Giants: Birdhouse in your Soul:
Reuters: Italy's black cat day aims to halt killings
Saturday is "black cat day", in Italy, an initiative by an animal rights group to try to stop the killing of thousands of the cats by superstitious citizens convinced they bring bad luck.
Interfering busy-bodies! I'm beginning to think that superstition might not be such a bad thing after all.
During an instant messaging session with Carolyn last night, I drew her attention to a brilliant photograph I had spotted on the Flickr photosharing website, which I thought she would like. She did.
In return, Carolyn drew my attention to the following comment made about said photograph:
{wyethhouse} (pro) says:
it's really great! full of life and expression
As Carolyn pointed out, the commenter's own photograph is anything but!
You've got to hand it to opera singers, they have such memorable names. Maria Callous, Luciano Paparazzi, Plácebo Domingo: an awful lot of marketing effort went into coming up with those handles.
But there's a new diva in town whose name really does take the biscuit. I speak of none other than Anne-Sofie von Otter.
Now there's a lady destined for stardom!
BBC: BBC Trust commissions news review
The BBC's governing body is to review the corporation's coverage of news across the UK following devolution…
BBC trustee Richard Tate said the devolution of powers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had presented "new challenges" for the corporation.
That's all well and good for those parts of the UK which have devolved government, but what about the rest of us?
It's a matter of continuing irritation to those of living beyond the M25 just how little news coverage we receive in so-called national news broadcasts. The BBC's dismissive attitude to those of us living north of Epping Forest—those odd chaps who pronounce their A's short and live on tripe and whippets—is nicely illustrated by the role of North of England Correspondent. Note the singular: the BBC thinks it proportionate to dedicate as many correspondents to the whole of the North of England as it does to a handful of German toffs down the Palace who pronounce their A's long.
I live in the biggest county in England: Yorkshire. I can't remember the last time I heard national BBC News coverage of anything that happened in this county. What's that you say? Yorkshire is four counties. I stand corrected. Well, our neighbours in North Yorkshire live in the biggest county in England, and I still can't remember the last time I heard national BBC News coverage of anything that happened in that county.
But perhaps that's because national news bulletins are becoming increasingly irrelevant. I gave up on national BBC TV and Radio news coverage years ago, and now totally rely on RSS feeds for my news coverage. I have a really nifty feed which delivers any news stories which mention Hebden Bridge direct to my desktop, and another for stories which mention Charles Darwin. Oh, and I also have (at the last count) 157 other news feeds, all of which are relevent to me. If Stense gets mentioned in the arty-farty press, I pick up on the story almost immediately (and totally freak her out by sending her a link—I suspect she thinks I'm stalking her). If someone links to Gruts or comments on one of my photos on Flickr or publishes the latest edition of a podcast I like, I am informed automagically. It's like having my own very, very personal newspaper.
So, if you haven't got into RSS feeds yet, why not give them a go? Hell, there's even one for Gruts. All you need is an RSS Reader (I use and recommend Google Reader), and the world is your oyster in a nutshell.
Gaa! The the cat's out of the bag! Now you know how it is that I am so incredibly well informed.
You can't fault the Grauniad on how they grade their puzzles. Yesterday's Futoshiki was piss-easy:
BBC: England 2–3 Croatia
England failed to qualify for Euro 2008 after losing a sensational game against Croatia at Wembley.
Why do we waste valuable airtime on these pathetic no marks? Time to embrace a vastly superior sport as our national game.
I heard someone use the expression the other day: "Let's do a working breakfast!" they said, without a hint of irony. I'll bet it's some nasty American fad.
Breakfasts aren't for working. Breakfasts are for grunting, farting and putting food and tea into your face while you try to work out what the hell day it is.
No, let's not do a working breakfast.
Actually, on second thoughts, yes, let's! We can 'do' it at my place. I do breakfast at 5:30am. See you there.
LCD Soundsystem: North American Scum:
It's like something out of StarTrek™:
Billy Bragg: New England
I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song
I'm twenty-two now, but I won't be for long…
Read those lyrics again. Go on, I'll wait for you…
Did you spot the temporal paradox? Billy Bragg says that he was 21 years old when he wrote the song, but that he's 22 now. But, when he wrote the song, 'now' was back then, when he was still 21—so how could he have been 22? And, if he was still 21 when he wrote the song, why did he refer to it in the past tense?
It's as if the 22-year-old future Red Wedge crooner totally fucked up the timeline by getting sucked into some wormhole in space and sent back one year so that there were two of him, aged 21 and 22 respectively, at the same time.
That has got to be breaking the Temporal Prime Directive.
Either that, or Billy Bragg is a bloody liar.
Good grief, even the Christians are at it now:
What next: a pact with Al Qaeda?
