Made Oota Refined Coal
I noticed today that the featured article on Wikipedia was about a WWI era german battleship SMS Von der Tann, which is fairly interesting in and of itself, but I was bemused to notice that the Wikipedia gremlins had managed to get their grubby little paws on the article.
The result was a fairly slapdash attempt at humourous vandalism that seems to have been inspired by lolcats, or possibly even carried out by them:
That’s right. Kitten battleships. Don’t tell El Kat…
Today is the tenth anniversary of my first ever online purchase from Amazon. What did I buy?
Why The Complete Reference, Java 2 ( Third Edition ) of course. It cost me £22.26 and £2.45 for postage and packing.
I don’t think I actually read the damn thing tho, and I have no idea what happened to it.
I think it’s fair to say that few actors have quite as interesting an on-screen presence as Christopher Walken. Nobody can quite pull off creepy, psychotic villain or unsettling anti-hero quite like him.
Equally I think it’s fair to say that few writers approach the Gothic menace of Edgar Allan Poe when it comes to prose and poetry. Now imagine if you will the Frankenstein’s Monster of aural pleasure that would come from a combination of these two elements.
In fact, imagine no longer! Tremble mortals as Christopher Walker reads The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe…
If you’re in need of something to calm you down after that, then have a look at this sketch by Anthony Ahern from an Australian comedy sketch show called The Wedge.
Many thanks to Herr Makdowall for pointing this one out to me.
I don’t think that there are many people in the developed world that would argue that the internet has developed into one of the wonders of the modern world. It’s everything that was promised by the know it all computers of 70′s and 80′s science fiction. OK maybe it doesn’t speak to us in a nanny-ish Mary Poppins voice but at least it can provide us with almost any piece of information we might require.
One very good example of this amazing storehouse of knowledge is a solution to a fairly old problem: Exactly who is it that owns that number that keeps phoning you that you don’t recognise?
My house phone seems to get inundated with strange and exotic numbers at all times of the day and night. I get the impression that it used to belong to some kind of takeaway at one point, and maybe some sort of house shared by a dozen immigrant workers. Before I turned the ringer off and stopped trying to answer it I used to get phone calls from thickly accented Middle Eastern people demanding to know if “Ali” was there. Not much fun when they’re phoning in the middle of the night. Needless to say they wouldn’t believe me that Ali wasn’t in residence anymore, and that the phone number had long since been recycled.
After a while I finally turned the ringer off and started using my mobile so that I could see who was phoning me in advance. Like a lot of people I generally only answer when I recognise the number, or better yet have it programmed into my phone, and I let the voicemail service take care of the rest.
It doesn’t stop them trying though, and being the curious type I like to try and find out who’s been trying to get hold of me so that I’m not going to be phoning back some premium rate number or telling a bunch of scam artists that they’ve found a live number.
A case in point is the phone number 02920 368 767 which tried to phone me three times today. Thanks to my stint in directory enquires I know to be a number somewhere in Wales. As I don’t know anyone in Wales, nor do I have any great interest in the country, I concluded that it wasn’t anything urgent. As no voice mail was left after it stopped ringing I assumed it was probably a wrong number, but to be certain I bounced onto the internet and used a website I found a while back:
Whocallsme.com is a used contributed database of cold callers, pushy salesmen and those annoying phone calls that you get where the phone rings, but there’s nobody on the other end of the line. It’s particularly useful because users can contribute information about numbers including what the company is, what they want and how annoying they are. The entry for the number I quoted above is a classic example of the site at its most useful. A quick scan of the latest comments told me that the number belonged to a company that does cold calls selling debt management products. Ironically a lot of people reported that the first line of their pitch was “don’t hang up on me I’m not selling anything. I suppose you’ve heard about the credit crunch.”
If whocallsme fails to turn up any answers you can always resort to the power of Google and just type the number in. You’ll be amazed about the amount of information you can turn up with just a quick search…
I don’t think that there are many people in the developed world that would argue that the internet has developed into one of the wonders of the modern world. It’s everything that was promised by the know it all computers of 70′s and 80′s science fiction. OK maybe it doesn’t speak to us in a nanny-ish Mary Poppins voice but at least it can provide us with almost any piece of information we might require.
One very good example of this amazing storehouse of knowledge is a solution to a fairly old problem: Exactly who is it that owns that number that keeps phoning you that you don’t recognise?
My house phone seems to get inundated with strange and exotic numbers at all times of the day and night. I get the impression that it used to belong to some kind of takeaway at one point, and maybe some sort of house shared by a dozen immigrant workers. Before I turned the ringer off and stopped trying to answer it I used to get phone calls from thickly accented Middle Eastern people demanding to know if “Ali” was there. Not much fun when they’re phoning in the middle of the night. Needless to say they wouldn’t believe me that Ali wasn’t in residence anymore, and that the phone number had long since been recycled.
After a while I finally turned the ringer off and started using my mobile so that I could see who was phoning me in advance. Like a lot of people I generally only answer when I recognise the number, or better yet have it programmed into my phone, and I let the voicemail service take care of the rest.
It doesn’t stop them trying though, and being the curious type I like to try and find out who’s been trying to get hold of me so that I’m not going to be phoning back some premium rate number or telling a bunch of scam artists that they’ve found a live number.
A case in point is the phone number 02920 368 767 which tried to phone me three times today. Thanks to my stint in directory enquires I know to be a number somewhere in Wales. As I don’t know anyone in Wales, nor do I have any great interest in the country, I concluded that it wasn’t anything urgent. As no voice mail was left after it stopped ringing I assumed it was probably a wrong number, but to be certain I bounced onto the internet and used a website I found a while back:
Whocallsme.com is a used contributed database of cold callers, pushy salesmen and those annoying phone calls that you get where the phone rings, but there’s nobody on the other end of the line. It’s particularly useful because users can contribute information about numbers including what the company is, what they want and how annoying they are. The entry for the number I quoted above is a classic example of the site at its most useful. A quick scan of the latest comments told me that the number belonged to a company that does cold calls selling debt management products. Ironically a lot of people reported that the first line of their pitch was “don’t hang up on me I’m not selling anything. I suppose you’ve heard about the credit crunch.”
If whocallsme fails to turn up any answers you can always resort to the power of Google and just type the number in. You’ll be amazed about the amount of information you can turn up with just a quick search…
As I’ve mentioned in the past I enjoy the odd ironic or strange collisions of events that often take place in the world. I like to look on them as a kind of reward for putting up with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. When I spot one it’s a bit like finding the one caramel soft centre in a box of coffee Revels.
Today while on a sojourn to the Govan Asda I was rewarded by the amusing scene of a pair of tweenagers dancing and singing along, word for word, with Lily Allen’s latest single “Not Fair”.
For the benefit of the three people that McDowall has locked in his basement with only the internet for company and who have never heard it here’s the video off youtube.
Now I get that the song is popular, and it’s getting near constant airplay on the radio and TV at the minute, but has anyone actually stopped to think how absurd it is for a pair of primary school weans to be singing lines like:
Oh I lie here in the wet patch,
In the middle of the bed,
I’m feeling pretty damn hard done by,
I spent ages giving head.
Now I understand fully that all the adults in the audience will believe that kids won’t understand the underlying meaning of the words. Well my answer to that is: What underlying meaning? The song is a less than subtle critique of a boyfriend that’s generally great but useless in the sack. It’s not hidden in obscure metaphor, or couched in flowery lyrics. It’s out there bold as brass, and twice as mockey, with no ambiguity what so ever.
When all is said and done I don’t think the song should be censored in any way. It makes a refreshing change for someone to bring out something that isn’t a sighing love-song-by-numbers. Still I can’t help but be amused by what comes out of the mouths of bairns nowadays.
After the storms last night I guess whoever is operating the global weather machine’s watch is running about a month out from the rest of the world. Either that or he’s never heard of the old saying: March winds and April showers, bring forth May flowers.
I spotted this bit of damage on the way into The Work this morning.
I spotted a news story today in The “Scottish” Sun that I feel really sums up the age in which we’re currently living. Most of the story won’t be surprising to anyone that’s been on public transport in Glasgow. It’s the same old merry-go-round of a nutter getting on the bus, verbally abusing the driver and then rounding on anyone that looks at them the wrong way.
This time the nutcase boarded the 62, in the middle of the afternoon on bank holiday Monday, and started abusing the driver about the increase in the fare to his intended destination. Incidentally the increase started away back at the end of March and was widely publicised about the buses and in the Evening Times etc.
The next step for this guy was, of course, to turn his anger on the other passengers travelling on the bus. The nut job is now firmly entrenched on the bus and even goes as far as to start abusing a primary school kid because he was wearing a Rangers top. The boy and his dad were both, probably quite rightly, too scared to do anything about the eijit and presumably ignored him or smiled politely in the hope he would go away. No doubt the rest of the bus were quite happy that he wasn’t picking on any of them directly and muttered under their breath that somebody should do something about him. One passenger though, a guy by the name of Barry MacDonald, didn’t just mutter. He actually took it upon himself to challenge the nutter about his behaviour in a rare act of personal bravery and social responsibility.
Naturally the thug stewed about this for a bit, and then as his stop approached he pulled a knife and stabbed Barry in the stomach. Nobody tried to stop him, or even try to get hold of him before he fled, and nobody on the packed bus has come forward as a witness to this attack. Still it’s a well known fact that the people of Glasgow have no love for the police eihter. I can’t very well blame the nutters entirely; if they do something and get away with it then they’re more likely to do it again. If we’re honest with ourselves this wasn’t the first time that someone was attacked or even murdered in broad daylight in a busy place and nobody can remember seeing anything. I’ve even seen it myself on occasion while passing by a bus stop. The police dragging some drugged up lunatic off a bus while the passengers berate the cops for being thugs, pigs and bastards even though I guarantee before the cops showed up every man jack of them was praying that the nutter would either get off at the next stop or that someone would do something about him.
As an aside I’d like to say that I don’t know what it is about Glasgow, but there seems to be an ever increasing prevalence of thugs like this lately. Every single time this kind of stuff happens it’s a sad step back for a city that’s tried so hard to lose the image of scar faced razor wielding hoodlums. It doesn’t matter how much they spend on Chinese granite and urban regeneration. They still haven’t managed to tackle the root causes of all the problems: That quintessentially Glaswegian nutter element that has consistently dragged the city down to their level.
So shame on you Glasgow, the city that breeds a generation of dangerous thugs and then hasn’t the courage to face up to them. Shame on the people who sat and muttered and hoped that “someone” would do something about the bam that boarded the bus but hadn’t the courage to help the one man who tried. Finally shame, and thrice shame on everyone on that bus who went home and probably told everyone they knew about the excitement of the day, but hadn’t the decency, bravery or social responsibility to phone in to the police and say “I saw what happened on that 62 when that boy was stabbed.”
Some sad news today: Dom DeLuise has died at the age of 75. If you don’t instantly recognise the name you might remember him from one of the many classic movies that appeared in over his career. He’s probably most famous nowadays for appearing alonside Burt Reynolds in The Cannonball Run, but he’s worked hard and consistantly for years as a character actor. I really liked him in many of the films that he appeared in. He was one of those “larger than life” actors in the vein of John Candy, Chris Farley and John Belushi who was blessed with comic timing and could make you smile without even uttering a word.
Rest in peace Captain Chaos. The world is poorer without you.
There’s nothing like the arrival of a potential global pandemic to bring out the worst in everyone. Already the global news community is going gaga over every single bit of information that comes out about the Mexican Swine Flu outbreak. They’ve managed to whip the western world into another media driven panic before the facts are completely clear and every item of news that comes out of Mexico, or the World Health Organisation, is being taken as another toll of the DOOM BELL.
The Mexican government have very wisely put the country into a state of controlled shutdown to contain the virus as best they can. Not easy in a country of a hundred million people, and especially difficult within the cramped confines of Mexico City.
If George W Bush was still in the white house I’d expect him to declare a War on Flu and send in the marines, but the Obama administration are a lot less reactionary. Without the often amusing George W to fall back on I’ve been forced to look further afield for crazy acts by world governments.
Surprisingly though it seems to be Egypt that was first to go BATSHIT INSANE over the whole Swine Flu thing. Which is odd to begin with considering that the nearest confirmed case is in Israel. It’s already been reported on the news that the Egyptian government have seized almost every pig. The great irony is that the so called Swine Flu is a mutant strain born of the intermingling of Swine Flu, Avian Flu and common or garden Man Flu. It isn’t communicated through pigs, and appears to have no effect on the animals. The slaughtering of pigs appears to be either rank stupidity or some kind of PR stunt designed to reassure the population that the government is taking action.
