That's How It Happened

I know, let's train orang-utans to kickbox, and then dress them in boxing gear, and then have chimpanzees wearing bikinis to carry the cards with the round number, and then, and then, and then international outrage will ensue, but geez it was a cool idea to start with.

Because Nick Catchdubs is hyped about it, and not 'cause I've ever eaten an actual White Castle Burger, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle goes on the looonnnngg list of movies I gots to catch.

Screaming Jelly Babies is one awesome experiment I never got to do in chemistry class. My chemistry teacher was a 75 year old Royal Navy boxing champion. He probably never heard of jelly babies.

Kinda like the decapitation video I decided not to watch, I'm not listening to this either, but its an online collection of black box recordings from actual air disasters. Enjoy sickos.

Best Flash game ever? Yeah I know I say that every week, but like this game rules dude. My top score is 710, and I isn't even like trying.

And finally and sincerely I'd like to say thanks to everyone who visited this crappy site this month. I came so close to quitting the blogging business, but then this month, like every month, had a bumper crop of visitors, (7000 fricking page requests, and 2000 visitors), and an especially fecund amount of commenting, and I feel re-invigorated with the joys of micro-publishing.

SeeWhatYouShare have been diligently scouring P2P networks for other people's personal photos. Voyeuristic fun.

The Great Molasses Disaster.

Get in on the Paypal class action now. Your share of $3.2 million is waiting (sounds like a 419 scam doesn't it?)!

This week my brother trialled a new piece of software that allows you to read without moving your eyeballs. It projects the words directly into the field of view of your macula, while you crank the dial to increase your reading speed. He got up to 750 wpm on Alice In Wonderland, blitzing the opening chapters in a few minutes. This different pointless online app lets you test your reading speed against JFK's inaugural address and another piece of fiction (like I couldn't time myself with a book?). The two pieces are each only 850 words, and I easily nailed them inside of a minute, (average is a paltry 200-250 wpm). I will admit to concentrating pretty damn hard: when really pushed I scan two lines at once, while simultaneously interpreting the previous two lines. I'm sure this technique is only in the amateur leagues of speed readers though. I guess I now need a test of my comprehension and recall to see whether my method is actually effective.

Cartoons made from airline safety cards.

No gmail invite yet? Now you have a 2 to the power 99 chance of winning one.(or just ask me nicely).

The Guardian is now the net's number one primary news source. If they could somehow buy out Google News they would have a tasty first mover advantage.

World's first synthetic prion. Grey goo is coming!

Pokia, the hands free set from the sixties.

Fingerskating still lame (now teutonic and lame).

Stalking A.A.Gill
Just 3 months after my last encounter with A.A. Gill, I sat next to him last night at the theatre. We had both gone to see The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?, by Edward Albee. It's a play about a successful architect who is forced to admit to his family that he's in love with a goat (called Sylvia). It's funny, shocking, and very sad. Great script, great production, inspired central performance from Jonathon Pryce. Anyway enough about the play. Gill was accompanied by his former supermodel girlfriend Nicola Formby. She was rather disappointing in real life, but I was struck by what an unlikely couple they make. In his linen suit with a giant matted beard Gill looks like a scruffy university lecturer, hardly the supermodel squiring type (qv Har Mar Superstar). They are not the world's oddest couple: Kelly Hoppen and Sol Campbell spring to mind, as do Juliette Lewis and Steve Alba. I am led to believe that the "pressures of fame" are such that celebs are only able to date other celebs, no matter how disparate their ages/careers/interests may be. With no particular prize in mind, I should like to suggest a small competition for submitting the oddest celebrity couple. Scoring will be based on the above criteria, with bonus marks for couples with low Bacon numbers, or excess plastic surgery. Let battle commence.

Ten years online.
I just realised that this month marks my 10 year anniversary as an internet addict. I think that makes me a relatively early adopter. I remember for sure that in the run up to purchasing my first modem (which could handle a dazzling 9600 bits per second, i.e. 60,000 times slower than my present connection), I had a hand written list of sites I wanted to visit. The only available browser was Mosaic, which was less than a year old, and Netscape was just a twinkle in Jim Clarke's eye. I booted it up on my father's PowerMac, and the first website I checked out was oddly enough the Klingon Language Institute. It looks pretty much the same today as in '94. Back then you had to have a whole host of programs for getting the best of the internet. Mosaic couldn't handle FTP, nor access the Usenet. In fact most webpages were very static, so the majority of the online dialogue took place over Usenet. There were so few people hooked up worldwide that the whole grunge scene was discussed in a single alt.music newsgroup. People who don't "get" the antipathy toward Internet Explorer, probably never experienced the web via Mosaic and then Netscape. I certainly felt a strong loyalty toward Marc Andreasson and Jim Clarke. I was incredulous that the tools that they had provided were free, and that they directly enabled the information revolution. There's a great recap of the chronology of the birth of the web here, and I would love to hear other people's stories about battling with the early internet via the comments.

No sure if this is a new addition to the Banksy oeuvre, or if I had just overlooked it. However he's expanded from the confines of the wall/stencil/spraypaint medium, to the dead crow/cabling/security camera medium. At various prominent London sites the crows are seen attacking the camera's wiring. Banksy's work sometimes suffers for being dependent on a cheap pun, or a daring placement, but this is proper grown-up stuff: witty, anarchic, and a really timely comment, given that tonight is the 2004 UK Big Brother Award Ceremony.

"I got a "villain" tatooed under my left eye." Entry in competition for free laser ablation.

Google make up big lies regarding yesterday's MyDoom.0 outage, presumably in defence of their outrageous IPO valuation.

Sneaker Freaker Issue 4 has a must read interview with Hiroshi Fujiwara (you have to actually buy the paper and staples magazine though), while The Hundreds have an interview with custim superstar Meth.

"Nrthrn twts cn fck off out of LDN", text your important messages to a giant display board in Huddersfield town square, via Speakers (?sic) Corner

High level government paranoia: 2004 style and 1944 style.

Honey Harvest 2004 Update
Stings sustained: 10 (1 by the master, 9 by the apprentice, and goddammit every last one still burns.)
Frames of honey removed: 22
Pints of sweet cider drunk while slaving over hand extractor: 2
Number of chilling stories about life in Nazi Germany 1936-1939: lots (all excellent)
Litres of honey recovered: 14 (Yup, you read right 14 whole litres of sweet sweet honey from one hive.)

Honey Harvest 2004: The Preamble
I've been adopted by an aged local beekeeper. Today is honey harvest day, and I'm depending on my new mentor's wealth of experience. It's imperative that he helps prevent either swarming or floods of sticky honey in my mother's precious kitchen. I spent the best part of yesterday listening to his awesome stories about rogue swarms plaguing Islington, and his experiences of the 1936 Olympics (true!). I'm expecting 60lbs of honey, and I can tell you it will be grade-A primo shizzle. Honey fans can place orders via the comments at £3 per 1lb. Which leaves me with a net profit of approximately -£8 per jar; seriously if you need a massive tax write off before April 5th, invest in Cartwright Honey Co. now.

Brit Brit just gets uggsier and uggsier, so much so that my imaginary wedding to her has been indefinitely post-poned, unfortunately Lindsay Lohan seems to be letting her inner Little Miss Trailer Park shine through too.

Who would win Moose or Car? Neither, nor the driver by the look of it.

The Single Bitter Announcement Weblog

The Japan Hierarchy 1.1: People who self-identify as otaku consider themselves less pathetic than people who think artists like Shonen Knife and Cibo Mato are really big in Japan.

Where the rhythm rumbles and the concrete crumbles! Tiger Beer combine bhangra DJs and kick-boxing in a scuzzy underground carpark on the 29th July at Smithfield. Its like Diwali vs Fight Club! Buzz Buzz.

Mmmmm......antifreeze.

The Borg assimilate My Little Pony.

The periodic table of elephants.

Steve Sansweet, "head of fan relations", at Lucasfilm wrote, what was once my bible. He got to "unveil" the title of the 3rd Star Wars movie at Comic-Con 04 by wearing the above t-shirt . George Lucas had rather failed to keep the secret last month. You can preorder the t-shirt, and customise it to read "Revenge of the SHIT", which is undoubtedly what the movie will finally be.

Apparently is really does take more calories to digest celery than you get from eating it. According to this list all sorts of fruit and veg are negatively calorific. I don't believe for a second that either beetroot or pineapple should be on the list. After all those were actually staple foods in Poland and Hawaii respectively.

The lyrics to Tenacious D - Marijuanaville didn't seem to be available online (until now), they need preserving for posterity.

It isn't April 1st, but the story about spectacles that could be dismantled and used as chopsticks is definitely for fools only. No-one wants wasabi and a whiff of saba behind the ears.

RAWK! (via)

You know you won't be able to resist now, but seriously, consider this a warning, DON'T QUESTION THE MONKEY!!!

Wordcount uses the 100,000,000 words of the Britsh National Corpus to gives you the ranked frequency of usage of all words and names. Sadly "blog" and "starbucks" aren't in there yet, but you can discover if your name is more popular than "mcdonalds" or "syllogism".

Starbucks Musical Chairs: party game, flash mob, and political protest in one.

Churchsigenerator.com got all your vaguely blasphemous photoshopping needs covered. Enjoy other people's church signs here.

Three tiny tidbits from my actual factual (as opposed to virtual wirtual) life for y'all:
1. Went to a wedding, got maaaad drunk, fell asleep in then fell out of a tree, ripped the pants of my brother's favourite suit (he never reads this shizzle anyway), and then passed out in a clump of jerusalem artichokes, thereby missing out on sniping an auction for a DS pair of 1st Edition Wovens that I'd been having sleepless nights over. Some kind of lesson ought to have been learnt, but unfortunatly more synapses destroyed than created.
2. Had dinner at the Wolseley on Thursday, sat at a table next to Nigel Havers. UPDATE: 31/7/4 Many thanks to eagle eyed readers Sam and Will who pointed out that what I had originally written about Nige was both factually incorrect and defamatory. Wrists duly slapped. Much as I believe in the freedom to slander and libel at will on the web, in this case I'm issuing my first ever retraction.
3. Someone relatively well known to me got his face splashed across the tabloids for stalking Abi Titmuss. I shall preserve what remains of his anonymity/dignity/career by not naming/shaming. What really interested me was that, because I know him, I instantly started rationalising it as a little slip-up, not a ghastly abusive crime. Kind of like the wives of serial killers and rapists who never accept that their spouses are evil madmen. By the time I saw these hott pictures of Miss Titmuss (1,2,3,4) I was almost sympathising with my creepy stalking acquaintance. Not sympathetic enough to consider breaking into her apartment building and screaming at her through the letterbox until she called the police (twice in three days, idiot), but I kinda knew where he was coming from.

I wish there was more stuff on the ole internut that I just had no comprehension of. Trouble is I'm such a zeitgeisty little hipster that I'm practically always up to date on everything. Occasionally I find something utterly wonderfully bemusing: meet icanstilltellyourwifebill.com and Free Hockey Chicken. Ultra-hipsters can explain the weirdness via the comments.

When your apartment gets invaded by 60,000 angry bees, ensure you ignore the advice of professionals, instead you rely on Hollywood actor Dustin Hoffman to save your sorry ass.

Yet another Kim Jong-Il classic: Pyongyang has one of the world's tallest buildings at 330m, but it remains an empty shell, because construction halted 12 years ago, before the interior could be fitted.

Bid for 50 plastic fetuses, though as a point of fact 12 week fetuses cannot be identifed as either gender, so they are not, as claimed, all male.

MyRank is an awesome little chunk of html. Check the sidebar to see a live update of this site's Google Pagerank.

'Illarious photo of ball boys at Wimbledon having their eyes distinctly off the ball, and on erm...Maria Sharapova's shapely thighs.

In any given week in which I spend more than about 24 hours online (which I swear is not more than about 80% of weeks), I get overwhelmed by this secret dark feeling that the internet is evil. As one of the 46% of internet users who actually make a contribution to the so called "online dialogue", I guess that makes me an agent of evil. To redress the balance I wanted to highlight a truly heart-warming anti-internet story. Prepare to have your luddite cockles toasted:

A private collector in the northeastern United States has accomplished the astounding and unprecedented feat of assembling a complete collection of every comic book ever published by DC Comics.

"Ha! So what!" you say. In this globalised over-connected universe, how tough can it be? Just some dedicated dot-com millionaire throwing cash at eBay? Think again:

Amazingly, with the exception of a small handful of items toward the end of the quest, this collection was achieved the old-fashioned way with a lot of legwork and mileage, scouring comic shows and stores large and small from coast to coast. Almost no Internet usage was involved in assembling this amazing collection.

This is a collection that was acheived using a network of real friends, who met in person, and then physically hunted for comics from actual cardboard boxes, at genuine conventions of like minded obsessives.
There are other things that I love about this story. Firstly the original collection of all the DC superhero comics was complete back in 1987, and that the collector had to be urged to diversify into all DC comics. Secondly, that the most challenging items, seem to have no intrinsic interest or value as actual comics: "Girls' Love Stories #56" being the penultimate item.
I identify strongly with the helpless need to buy something quite ridiculous, whose only value is as part of a an equally stupid collection. Sadly though as an internet baby (almost) I am absolutely averse to contact with other collecting nerds. I am aware of one other UK woven collector, but I would never want to meet him or share tips.

In a more sociable venture, I would like to recruit a team to try to beat the Smirnoff Ice Challenge. I went with my brother to check it out last night, and it's very do-able. You get 1 minute to attack a 2.5m cube of ice with your bare hands, in order to recover £100,000. Half the money is in chunks of £500 attached to bottles of Smirnoff black vodka, half is won by getting to a central briefcase with attached ripcord. The ice has been melting since 10am yesterday, and the briefcase is expected to be won tomorrow afternoon. The key time to be in line must be at 6am tomorrow when the chipping and scratching frenzy restarts for the final day. I suggest an overnight camp out, with all campers agreeing to share the prize money. I also thought we could do with a frickin laser, but I haven't got time to prepare that.

Inmates break out of Tennesee prison, break in again with case of beer, drink beer, break out again, break in again with second case of beer, drink beer, get charged with escape. Best Beer Run Evs!

At last a high-carb high-fat alternative to Frappucino? Krispy Kreme Orignal Glazed Donut Drink. All the morbidly obese kids whose parents had their jaws wired shut are going to be so happy.

Augh! Not so normal anymore, are you Brenda?? What's up with Shannen Doherty's weird assymetrical face?

Is this a meme, or just child cruelty? Animated gifs of children having crazy accidents.

Things That Look Like Stormtroopers, to which I would add Rollerblade TRSs.

The Box Doodle Project is sweet as. Little graffitied figures made from packaging.

Supposedly the other Beastie Boys are jealous that only Mike D ever got one of those tiny stipple portraits they use in the New York Times and the New York Review of Books. This tiny non-pointilist portrait of MCA comes from NY Metro's guide to where rich people eat cheap food in NYC.

On the day that The Guardian expose the scandal sweeping pro beekeeping, is this the greatest scandal ever to hit professional Lego? Not only Harshbarger but the Lego Master Builders have admitted to using glue. Professional Sand Sculpting would never allow such cheating.

In MTV's Pimp My Ride, rapper Xzibit performs a Changing Rooms like makeover on college student's lousy cars. He uses a team of gearheads from West Coast Customs. They all look like extras from a Snoop Double Gizzle video. My favourite is the ultra camp drawling Latino "Ish". After all the other mechanics have explained their insane customisations: "real champagne jacuzzi", "solid gold Technics decks", "diamond encrusted fire breathing exhaust" etc etc, Ish steps forward, and almost unintelligably declares that the car will be entirely upholstered in lime green ostrich skin, or mauve prussian velvet. He is truly the most gangsta of all, despite his diminutive stature and lisping accent. You too can practice your Ride Pimpin', with Pimp My Ride : The Game.

Talk Like a Pirate Day is months off, but Aye, Robot is here now.

Podtender lets you take your bartending skills on the road iPod style.

I saw Jimmy Carr in Islington today. He's the odious presenter of Distraction. It's a most enjoyable show; he asks the luckless contestants relatively easy general knowledge questions, but then "distracts" them from giving the right answers by electrocuting them, punching them, and burning their prize money.
By the time we were shoulder to shoulder on the street I had formulated my plan: to ask for his autograph, then while he knelt down to fish a pen from his bag, give him a wedgie. It seemed like a great plan, proving that he too was unable to complete simple tasks while suffering pain and public embarrassment, and simulataneously I would be revenging his many humiliated contestants.
Of course it's actually illegal to assault celebrities, particularly assualts that might be mis-construed as sexual assaults, so I didn't...but you know...I could have...and it would have been cool and all.
 

Using bees as weapons.

"I'm the king of Jenga: I got mad power, nuff mad respec', fo ma crazy tower."

At the risk of joing the ranks of the accursed neophiliacs, I should like to suggest that whereas i (as in iMac and iPod) was once the new e (as in email and e-commerce), now clearly G is the new i, not just as in Gmail, but now as in GMileage a completely unrelated product.

Sharp little piece of journalism about suspicious possible terrorist activity on a US internal flight. The heady levels of fear and paranoia read like the movie Arlington Road.

Ass-licking Vincent Gallo interview, tries to rewrite the history of the Cannes fiasco.

Extreme bad taste alert: Miss Georgia Sex Offenders Pageant 2004. I actually totally disapprove of naming and shaming child molesters, but it's fun to name and shame hot 23 year olds who got convicted of statutory rape, or very hot 25 year olds who were unlucky enough to be arrested for public indecency.

Thinking more than I'm talking.
Coming home from the airport we got trapped beside an incredible speaking woman. She sat opposite an entirely silent "friend" and gabbled continously for the entire 45 minute journey. Her companion never even attempted to speak, so overwhelming was this moronic monologue. The whole carriage were captivated by her astonishing unbroken stream of babble. Eventually she received a call on her mobile, and transferred instantly to droning on at her mystery caller. As she hung up she said: "She's a very quiet person, I can often speak for twenty minutes with her, without her saying anything at all, I guess she thinks more than she talks." To everyone reading this in silence, I wish to offer you all a sincere and profound compliment: congratulations for thinking more than you are talking, long may you cultivate this admirable ability.

The Nike Mayfly is new but already has some cult value. There are only 5000, it weights just 4.8 ounces, and it is only designed to last 100km. You can probably make it last longer though, if you were only going to wear it for lounging in Hoxton's most stylish drinking houses.

The Onion rip off Hulk's Blog for an article that reminds us all that they are still the funniest thing on the internet, (except maybe "dogs in elk", see below): Why No-one Want Make Hulk 2?.
"Why no one appreciate daring vision of Ang Lee? Aaargh! Ang Lee genius! Maybe panels on screen gimmicky, but him try something new. When last time you try something new?! Ang Lee willing to work in unfamiliar genres. Him brave like Hulk. Hulk wish for him to work on Hulk 2, if he willing, but Hulk understand if he not want to."

Tube Driver Sim (flash) or alternatively walk around the congestion zone (featuring photos of the insane Vauxhall Cross rollercoaster/death trap/public walkway/motorway thingy.

As Ken Livingstone says: "F*ck you 4x4s" check the original F*ck you H2. And for the dick who double parks his Hummer H2 in Cavendish Square every Saturday night, (reg Y4NKY), truly I say "F*ck you".

No time for comments, but like they say, its all good; get clicking.
graffiti creator
megafowl
nike ads
Powerfeet
licking magic cow
dogs in elk
chicken contact lenses
snow monkeys
web ranking tool
no www.org
world's smallest kingdom
the ring.gif
wild ride

Same old same old linkage:

I have never: been described as a "coolhunter". (Until now baby! Scroll to the very bottom to see this flattering acknowlegement from some crazy dutch street meme artists.)

More porno for forest robot fans (SFW) Am I the only one? They have a simulator that is just begging for an arcade conversion.

The million dollar comic collection.

Gmail stores more than a gig, why am I not surprised?

NY Times catch on to the new wave of sneaker hype. And yet another sneaker news blog in the form of Lace Mag.

American Segue combines the plot of The Straight Story with the positive attitude of Golf Mongolia, on a frigging Segway. At 10mph I'd like to follow this guy continuously kicking his ass.

Toby Litt is easily in my 10 least favourite authors, though not quite challenging Paul Auster yet. However through his actual fans he has discovered the secret of the cool gel glue that sticks free CDs to the front of glossy magazines, and a bunch of other trivial fascinations. Perhaps a re-estimation of his ouevre is in order.

Best skateboarding developments? Cartoon guide to ice boarding and Hardwicke directing Lords of Dogtown not Fincher. And worst (by which I mean Durst) The Big Ollie Airband, an elastic band to fasten you to your deck, and X-Games Big Air Skateboarding, why must they meddle?

Can sharks detect 1 part blood in 1 million parts water? That only equates to 1cm cubed blood in a metre cubed water, which seems all too plausible. I think I could detect 1 part Fernet Branca in 1 million parts water. Sharks certainly seem to be able to team up in an interspecies surfer eating contest.

Finally aplatventre, the adventures of two "jokeurs francais" called Steinkat and Franck Sinatra, who photograph themselves lying hilariously prone all across Paris.

Not blogging = so hot right now.
But yeah, I am back from 'iguria, and yeah, it was funner than funny fun McFunfun.

LikeTotallyJihad and CookieThievery, no words could describe these similar yet bizarre sites, just click them and enjoy the madness.

Simparch are my new favourite art collective, check their awesome free basin, skate bowl.

I have visited a rather miserable 19% of the World's Top 100 Wonders, and an even more miserable 12.5% of the World's Top 1000 Wonders. The only world wonder really nagging me for a visit is the Spiral Jetty, which may well disappear (again).

Penguin Blood Ninja Fiasco

Really smart way of hacking google to find hidden mp3s.

Daisy de Villeneuve doesn't need any more press, but it's nice to promote friends, so check out her new exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum. And in a similar vein of nepotism (sic, what is the correct word?) props to Will Skids who slipped the word bildungsroman into this review of Jonathan Lethem for the LRB.

BapeCap looks like a tiny serving of BapeJam, but is actually a prophylactic. As RiftTrooper points out, none of the streetwear otaku who would buy this will ever ever get a chance to use it.

Via Monkeywire: the #1 source for news about monkeys and apes, the latest stateside political lobby. Bush Is Not A Chimp Dotcom (also featuring Apes for Kerry).

Visit Stereogum for the absolutely uggsiest pics of Brit Brit ever, (and Stereogum is the official home of Brit Brit news)

I am often itching to blog about amusing patients, but obvs I have to resist for reasons of confidentiality and professionalism. However a patient's partner made me almost asphyxiate from laughing too hard today, so I feel compelled to relay the hilarity. Filming his infant child's gory entry into the world, he did a perfect Lil Jon impression screaming repeatedly: "Yeaaaah! Yeaaaah! Yeaaaah!". On that note check Lil Jon's alleged highschool yearbook photo.

Oh and I really am going away tomorrow, I'm just hoping the pilot manages to land at the right airport.

I meant it, I really did. But within hours of declaring the death of this blog my creativity has been fired up. In the first of many things I instantly remembered to blog about:

5 Things I Should Never Have Bought When Drunk, (But Did, And Didn't Regret It)
In ascending cost order :
1. £5 bet on Greece to beat Portugal at 6 to 1. Thank you bestbetting.
2. Two copies of To The 5 Boroughs, on Amazon, delivered to one "I'm Dani McMacintosh Bitch", of Stuyvesant Park, Manhattan Island. It seemed funny at the time.
3. £20 spent introducing a now anonymous friend, to a friendly Canadian beaver, on his stag night, thereby almost endangering his engagement.
4. One size 9 pair of GISB Asia slip-on trainers, embroidered in gold with chinese dragons. These f@*#ers hurt me for weeks, then my feet kind of deformed to fit them, but they are a most unusual and alluring shoe.
5. £840 worth of canapes and champagne for my 26th birthday. And I remember about 5% of what happened that night, including the alleged part where I got crazy on the decks and started throwing precious Beastie Boys rarities at guests. My vinyl copy of Intergalactic never made it home.
Like I said, je ne regrette rien.

I have sad news. I am today announcing a trial separation from this blog. Over recent weeks I've found it increasingly tedious to provide new content. I don't merely want to relay new links, nor do I want to write an online diary. The compromise that this blog has become has been rather unsatisfying of late. The straw that broke the camel's back was this site documenting one couple's 27 years of devotion to a large ball of paint. I never felt like blogging was the revolution, but I hate the comparison, that I might just be laboriously painting layer after layer of pointless html. As of tomorrow I am flying to sunny Liguria for six days, and I thought that might be an ideal opportunity to not post anything. I suspect when I return I will either be cured of blogging, or miss it terribly. I might even resume a non-daily schedule of updates. Anyway I hope you all have a lovely week without my penetrating web-insights.
PS All the neologism fest entries were excellent. It was a complete dead-heat, and you may each claim your prize of either a gmail invite or a pot of honey, as you desire.

What was I saying? Oh yeah Saddam = Baddest of the Bad Asses. This gold plated AK-47 is just blingsanity.

"The minimum penalty Saddam will face is execution." said one Iraqi commentator on Radio 4 this week. Perhaps mindful of his fate, Saddam has been putting on one hell of a show in court. First the point-by-point guide to pointing, and then giving the judge an ass kickin tutorial in rock paper scissors. Still a bad badass, I'm saying we should keep him alive, he has an incredible post-dictatorship career ahead of him: after dinner speaking, guest-presenting Have I Got News For You, and he would be a great Wicked Stepmother in panto.

A light load of links today. A sudden avalanche of unexpected stress has knocked me flat. Due to the public nature of this forum, I am unable to reveal the source of my angst. Well not entirely. Part of the panic came from hopeless hung-over beekeeping; I found myself quite unable to heft hive parts filled with 60lbs of honey, and simultaneously subdue the swarm. The other contributor to my anxiety is work related and hence confidential. Expect normal service to resume over the weekend.

Things Magazine rules, so so so good. Best link/meme blog this month.

Start revising for International Talk Like A Pirate Day with The Seamans Grammar and Dictionary, arr, I be so excited already.

Dead people on Friendster, obvious but creepy.

Help a chipmunk/racoon-like mammal enjoy his zen spa in peace. Best Japanese Flash game since like last week.

Buy the self-same Nixon Bowling poster that The Dude has on his wall in the Big Lebowski.

Reverse Dictionary = so best, sesquipedalian had been eluding me for weeks.

50lbs of silly putty bounces less well than you might expect, (at least from 50 feet).

Thickies from Bath waste five years of academic struggle to conclude that your best chance of scoring a penalty is to aim for the top corners. And to practice this dimwit theory try David Beckham's Penalty Shootout 2004 Game or Freekick for Blighty Simulator.