That's How It Happened

Yesterday I went to my 14th consecutive Notting Hill Carnival. I'll admit it doesn't have the same visceral thrill as it did in 1990. Then as wide eyed 13 year olds we were overawed by the combination of enormous packed raucous crowds, illicit Red Stripe, and the heady wafting scent of goat curry, BBQ jerk chicken and marijuana. Nothing much has changed, the music is still loud, the floats underwhelming, but amusingly anachronistic, and the food stalls still piled high with rather repulsive Carribean "delicacies". The police presence is however far more obvious now, with thousands of officers and helicopters swarming the parade route.
The central area, particularly around All Saints Road is still deliciously intimidatingly unregulated. Huge crowds surge back and forward, packed shoulder to shoulder trying to get between different stages and sound systems. We half wanted to catch De La Soul, and as ever our travel plans, and the "schedule" of events, proved to be wildly inaccurate, so we just wandered about soaking up the atmosphere.
Seemingly though most of my other friends stayed firmly away. When I told people I'd been, they were unanimously negative. One guy even said he "hates Carnival", and thinks "it's a big f*cking waste of time". Now while I agree that it's not the most unmissable date in the London calendar, it is a paragon of multicultural diversity and tolerance. London may be ethnically diverse, but usually it's not terribly ethnically integrated. If you can't enjoy a single weekend of reggae, saltfish, and sugarcane,(sorry to get all political but) I think you are "part of the problem". I'm not any kind of anti-racism activist, but at least I didn't hole up in my country house for the weekend, wishing the Carnival would just disappear, as so much of Notting Hill seem to. OK, rant over, back to the usual:

McGoogle: google remixed with the bottom of a McDonalds bag.

Unbelievable, but MMORPGs now have the approximate population and GDP of Namibia, and will soon overtake Jamaica.

Gallo and Ebert appear to have settled their "worst film in the history of Cannes"/"curse on your colon" feud. Ebert even seems favourable toward the final cut of Brown Bunny.

I've never managed to dig anything out of the web archive before, but this diary by Linklater of his time making Dazed and Confused, was sure worth saving.

"He covered his whole body in green scale tattoos and split his tongue down the center and I’m calling that a fashion faux pas? Often there’s no difference between DOs and DON’Ts." The truth revealed as Vice launch their new Dos and Don'ts book.

I bought my brother a discount monstro-Habitrail set (pictured at top), for his birthday, in an homage to Microserfs. Now bizarrely Habitrail has been licensed for a rodent simulation game. Moi, always the king 'o' zeitgeist.

Only one item of hot breaking news on the internet today....(via)

I cannot recommend strongly enough, that you never choose to do nightwork. Eventually you get used to staying up all hours, and after a while you even manage to sleep during the day. But it still destroys your critical faculties, and purges you of intellectual curiosity. From 1 a.m. until sunrise, I'm like an automaton. Hence my insighful comments, may be somewhat less than insightful today:

The Skeleton Shop, a beautiful flash game, with a clever interface.

Let Them Sing It For You, a singing thingy, using words sampled from classic pop songs, reassembled into new lyrics.

Fuck It: The Game, really hard flash game combining elements of Tetris and Boggle. I'm just sucking at it, I can't figure out a single strategy for success, and my top score is 0.001% of the posted high score. Infuriating.

The internet is like a polluted New Delhi sewer, and that's just the worms, spam, and viruses, not the content. (Hooray for macs)

The Estimation Quiz. Takes time to complete, but really interesting. You get points for accuracy, but more points for estimating your inaccuracy correctly. I got 34%, but like I said, I'm asleep inside.

New species of shark discovered in captivity.

Incredible works of head-shaving, complete with tales of escape from communist Vietnam, and a $2 coupon to have your own head transformed into a masterpiece.

Fat kid eats 20 In-and-Out cheeseburgers in a single sitting, documents same on own blog, and gets 300+ messages of extreme abuse from anti-carnivores, anti-americans, anti-fatties, anti-gays, anti-bad web designers. Becomes meme in own right. Awesome work fat dude.

Pig's ears were pretty tasty. I figured the problem with them though. Firstly once you've spent 4 hours simmering them, then breaded them, roasted them, and finally chargrilled them, the economy of spending 25p on each one is lost. Secondly pig skin always retains that slight scent of the sty. It's porky goodness alright, but with the aroma of fresh, wriggling, feces strewn, piglet.

Really well designed flash pinball game; the rarest pinball table ever made (for the movie Richie Rich); the furminator, a conversion of Terminator 2 pinball to an awesome first person perspective.

Thinking of a change of career? Sperm donation can be highly profitable, but you could double your income by filming your own face at the moment of "petit mort", for SFW pseudo-porn site beautiful agony.

Britney tries on clothes, fails. There's a reason why Scott Stereogum remains the world's greatest Britney expert.

Blogging about whale hunting.

A horrible accident for your cursor.

Best stalking ever? "Me, my girlfriend, and our other friend met Val Kilmer at a gas station... we are all dwarfs so it was Willow revisited!".

Livin' Low On The Hog

The phrase "living high on the hog" refers to the expensive meaty cuts of pork enjoyed by the rich. These prize chunks of flesh come from the back and rump of the pig, literally high on the hog. In his new Meat Cookbook, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall espouses a policy of responsibility for the care of meat animals, a thoughtfullness towards the morality of carnivorism, and respect for the carcass by making use of all parts of the animal. With this in mind I set out today to buy some unusual bits of pig. My choice of butcher was The Ginger Pig, which does a good line in organically reared Tamworths, and Gloucester Old Spots. I'd decided to brave pig's ears, and trotters. This latter choice was especially brave, following a near catastrophic clash with pig's trotters at Le Hameau Albert 1er. On a now infamous occasion I attempted to tackle: "Le menu cochon, une degustation du cochon entier, de tete aux pieds". This Michelin starred menu comprised nine courses of pork, beginning with brawn (head meats), and ending with deep fried trotters. As I tucked into this ninth course my entire body was racked by nausea and pain, and I was forced to flee the restaurant, collapsing outside in the snow, a victim of my own gluttony. Anyway, today I wanted to vanquish the ghosts of that terrible night, by tackling trotters afresh. The butcher looked only faintly surprised at my request. But what he did next certainly surprised me. He stepped into his glass fronted refridgerator, and in my plain view began to hack off six ears and two trotters from the hung carcasses. Ears cost 25p each, and trotters 50p a piece. Once home I examined them gingerly. The ears are rather disgustingly hairy, and the left ears still have the identification tatoos of each donor pig. Luckily for me, my new cookbook demanded four hours of simmering time for trotters and ears, which I hadn't budgeted for. I got to enjoy the more prosaic pleasure of Nobu's tomato ceviche. But rest assured I shall report back tomorrow on my "low eatin'" experiences.

Crazy flash Twin Peaks-esque porno-mation thingy du jour (NSFW): The Hills Are Alive.

Nerd Porn Auteur: "Buy stock in some hand cream companies because there is about to be a major shortage."

Pleasure Boat Captains For Truth

"We, the men who were served drinks alongside George W. Bush, have partied with real party animals-- on the shores of Lake Tahoe, up and down the Gulf of Mexico, in the harbors of Kennebunkport. We have seen good men down a dozen kamikazes, and then swim once more onto the beach. We have watched the buzzed and brightest of our generation play beer pong until they were bent double, like beggars under sacks. We have known these party animals, and we have partied with them. And George W. Bush is no party animal."

Huh, a company that does stuff. "Our office is really modern and we've got nice computers and stuff. If you ever saw it, you'd say "Wow, cool office. These guys are legit.""

$1000 laptop/iPod case based on the Supreme Dunk Huh? Huh! I don't get it. (via)

When you quit work to become a Beanie Baby authenticator, and get the license plate BBABIES, you should figure your obsession has gotten out of hand. (login: latimes1 password: latimes2)

More flash games than can really be good for you in one go.

The stars of hip-hop: what their mommas named them. Weirdly Lumidee's real name is uh, Lumidee.

My Little Pony remixed with Justice League of America: Ponyfied.

I know most of you are now strangers, not actual friends, but please bear with me for an indulgent personal post. I've had the strangest 24 hours. It began with a protracted session of square sake and round okonomiyaki (above, via moblog!!). Then followed the most appalling work shift of seemingly endless operative deliveries. After delivering a baby I'm always hopeful that the parents might choose to call it Rufus. That never happens. Nor do they ever send champagne or cigars. The best I ever do is the odd thank you card (which is still much appreciated). However today, as I had nearly dropped dead from exhaustion, a new father offered me his newborn daughter's hand in marriage when she turned 18. Best thank you present ever? I was so tired I struggled to do the math. Me, as a 45 year old, in need of a second, or perhaps third wife, in an arranged marriage with an unwilling south London teenager. You'll be pleased to know that I had the good grace to decline. But for a moment it was very tempting.
The oddness continues in the linkage:

Graham Coxon (Real or WMA) remixes Triple Trouble for the new Beastie Boys single.

Cricket fighting now illegal, and before I could even get into it.

And I swear you couldn't make this up: despite inventing the word zeitgeist, Teutons plunge new depths of uber-unhipness with Pissing Fingers, the world's only pro-finger skating DVD, starring Chris "Mad" Tail. Go forth young meme and multiply, soon may college students and nerds everywhere be chuckling at your mid-european madness.

Wanna be as pixelicious as eBoy or Flip Flop Flyin? Check this tutorial for creating pixel art.

Stupid flash game du jour: The Invisibility Game

eMachineShop lets you create your own "thing" in CAD, and then get it shipped to you in real metal or plastic form. So cool it makes me want to make stuff.

The definitive guide to Olympic Babes, with an astonishingly high percentage of NSFWness. Trust the Dutch to get XXX sporting action right.

Harry Potter remixed with Kill Bill: Kill Harry, "Is that a Hanzo wand, Miss Granger?"

The Greedo Shoots First controversy remixed with People's Court/Judge Judy (Judge Palpatine?): The Emperor's Court.

The Random Name Generator creates random names from US census data. Crank the obscurity factor up to 99 and get some really wacky monikers.

Ever since I got my new shiny Nokia 6600, I've been trying to find a good game to while away the hours with. I started out with Tony Hawk Underground, which sucked, and for £2.50 only provided an hour of gameplay before it was finished. Then taking O2's recommendation I splashed out a fiver on Trivial Pursuit. The game is sweet, good design, graphics, and gameplay. Unfortunately they only thought to include 200 or so questions in the question bank, so that was mucho short-lived fun too. Another fiver wasted on Lemonade Tycoon, which I had previously enjoyed at Yahoo games, and I was starting to feel pretty angry at the whole mobile games business. Then all of a sudden I chanced upon the as yet unreleased Pax Athletica. This game uses the genius pixel work of Flip Flop Flyin, combined with the street cred and threads of alife and adidas, to recreate the 7 most historical moments of Olympic glory. It seems to have all the joys of Epyx's 1987 classic California Games, without the hassle of trying to run an Amstrad emulator on your mobile phone. I'm not the only one buzzed about the game either; it's getting major hype in Rolling Stone and the next issue of Tokion too. Shame its only planned for Verizon, and a bunch of dipshit handsets, because it sure looks neat.

The Name Generator Generator.

Get a corporate logo tatooed on a stranger for just $600.

George Lucas knows exactly how to hype Ep:3: first release toys from Ep:4/5/6 in original style 77-85 packaging, then deliberately provoke rumours of Ep:7/8/9. Genius (of PR) at work.

From alt.nerd.obsessive the incredible news that Comic Book Guy has a name, and it's Louis Lane.

Blog 'o' the week is by angrychefs who leads a farcically stereotypical mid-west life of bad tattoos, gambling, drinking, motorbikes, and really evil stories about his time in Iraq.

The University of Nigeria has some very innovative lecture courses: "Special seminar with the Prince of Nigeria on how to transfer $30 Million to the US or any other country without any traces."

Sweden is not a state in the United States of America.

And finally in a vaguely self-referential double linkage: The Ultimate Hipster Accessory and LoveKatie.

Hardy Blechman has a protective yet prohibitive policy regarding his prized collection of nerd-toys. Cameras are banned at the Maharishi store. If you try to take a photo a bouncer promptly attempts to disassemble your camera. Fortunately my little Sony is made of sturdy stuff, and survived its "examination". Having consulted my lawyers I bring you this pic of the Michael Lau x Maharishi x Nike Air Force 1. Laser etched on the heel it says "Michaelrishi Blechman", along with the Maharishi logo. Only 5 ever made, and given that the much more numerous Fiberops x Lau x Nike Wildwood (pictured here signed by Mikey) has fetched in excess of $20,000, it's a very, very expensive shoe.

You probably knew that metafilter has a clone called monkeyfilter. Strangely ebaum's world now has a clone too, welcome to abum.

Should we drop to six days a week, and enjoy the luxury of the 28 hour day?. If you lived indoors, and never saw natural light this would be possible. But actually the circadian clock would vote for a 25 hour day, which is why you could always use an extra hour in bed.

Ray Caesar is the best art director Tim Burton never had, he was also born a dog.

More excellent invisibilty cloak images and movies.

Pierre Omidyar invented eBay. Now he's up to something else. It looks to be a lot less commercial.

GTA: San Andreas, so eager, so anticipated.

Your working day ends here Mr Bond: gyroball.

Planet of The Apes remixed into The Twilight Zone

Worst personal ad ever?

Great amblyopic animated gif.

Lockpicking: the competitive sport.

After a catastrophic harddrive meltdown last year, and the general rubbishness of iPhoto, I think Flickr may have me as a new customer. In particular organizr looks like a glorious online dream.

"Extrapolation is more fun than interpolation." Article about predicting whether women will ever run faster than men, based on past marathon records.

Matt and Trey have wasted $32 million (crappy NYTimes login) on a puppet movie, starring Kim Jong-Il. Best!

Tiny kick-ass robot flies. I mean micro-mechanical flying insects.

I think I blogged SkyEar before, but dammit it looks cool, and it's coming to Greenwich in September: "The cloud consists of 1000 extra-large helium balloons that each contain 6 ultra-bright LEDs (which mix to make millions of colours). The balloons can communicate with each other via infra-red; this allows them to send signals to create larger patterns across the entire Sky Ear cloud as they respond to the electromagnetic environment (created by distant storms, mobile phones, police and ambulance radios, television broadcasts, etc."

A reader asks: "Where is Monday's update, and what happened to the reliable consistency of this once proud daily blog?"
Rufus replies: "Rufus wasted all of Monday trying to repair an iBook using only super-glue and a pair of tweezers. When that failed he made unsuccessful attempts at moblogging. Now he feels stupid and at odds with modern technology. He does enjoy referring to himself in the third person though."

Reading blogs you mostly get the impression that people are intelligent, articulate, and multifaceted. The new blogger navbar gives you a great opportunity to learn just how stupid and unintelligible most people really are. All blogspot hosted blogs are now linked by a random webchain. You can view random blog after random blog at the click of a button.
The horrifying discovery is that the vast majority of blogs are pitifully awful. Maybe 1% do not fall into one of the following categories:

1. Scintillating insights about Bush and/or Kerry
2. InSaNe CoMMeNtS from aSiAn tEenS
3. Utterly a hrf="< fucked /a] HTML, mak {}ing [/i
it illegible
4. Only a single initial post before being abandoned
5. A final post that reads "I promise to update more often"
6. Really really terrible long winded posts about the joys of child rearing/kitten rearing
7. Bogus "spam" blogs promoting ViAgRa or pR0N

In maybe a straight hundred random blogs the only two of any interest: mind the shark and nov22 in which people blog the fish they've caught, with pretty pictures. I challenge you to do any better. Start from Peabs and try and find a single good random blog. Blogs suck harder than you could imagine.

Go and see the Mad Ape Pen a web URL of few syl abl es.

Lists, lists, and more lists. Soon there will be no journalism, only lists. But seriously Chuck Palahniuk's "List of 10 non-perishable disaster foods that make me look forward to earthquakes or atomic attacks", and Christian O'Connell's "Top five chimps in history." (which strangely includes a squirrel monkey, a gorilla, and an orang utan), is actually awesome reading. Keep up the non-journalism journalists.

Roka looked promising: great reviews, awesome interior design, championing of shochu cocktails, and cheap(ish) prices for fancy japanese food. Sadly it's a little disappointing: the sushi is less good than Pham or Nobu, and the cocktails were abysmal. Though full marks for at least daring to combine shochu, calpico, and pear juice.

Circus Oz are performing at the Royal Festival Hall for three weeks. It's billed as a sexy contemporary circus. I caught the opening night, and actually it's deliciously old fashioned. Well except for the lesbian static trapeze act. There's several awesome acts, including brilliant flatland bmx set to music, and a guy who dislocates both shoulders in order to squeeze his body through the head of two tennis rackets. I almost want to run away and join the circus.

Nike Air Woven: 20 down, 27 to go.
There is no real update today, mostly because I've been obsessing about shoes again. I picked up both men's and women's Japanese only SL Wovens at MyTrainers yesterday. They are the 19th and 20th pairs crammed into my cupboard. I got into a frenzy of worrying about how many pairs I still have to get. Having extensively scoured google.co.jp and hk-kicks.com, I can now reveal the complete list of all 47 colorways of the Nike Air Woven. There are 4 gaps where I know the colorway code, but not the actual name. Even so this is the most complete list in existence on the whole internet. The pairs I already have are in bold, which should come in handy at xmas, when you'll all be rushing out to b23b and samplekickz to help me get shot of this madness.

1st Edition:
001 ANTHRACITE/NEUTRAL GRAY-SPICE
041 NEUTRAL GREY/DK GRAPE-LT STRAW
121 LT STRAW/PRALINE-PONY
2nd Edition:
661
3rd Edition:
011 DARK CHARCOAL/IVORY
031 SOFT GRAY/BRIGHT TEAL
042 DARK CHARCOAL/GAME BLUE
061 BLACK/CHILI RED
071 LIGHT BONE/LIGHTENING
131 IVORY/ARMY OLIVE
301 MOSS GREEN/DARK CHARCOAL
311 YAKI KHAKI/LIGHT STRAW-PONY
411 REGATTA/IVORY
641 SAMBA/GAME BLUE
321
032 NY x HEADPORTER BLACK/GRASS GREEN
231
4th Edition:
081 DK CHAR/BR MANDARIN-C GREY
271 BRITISH KHAKI/CASHMERE-LINEN
331 CARGO/CARGO-GRAVEL
5th Edition:
481 GLACIER BLUE/AGENT
021 BLACK/DK MOCHA
003 MIDNIGHT FOG/MED CHARCOAL-BARN
004 BLACK/MET SILVER/MET GRAPHITE
412 CITY NAVY/WHITE
141 IVORY/CITY NAVY
312 CLASSIC OLIVE/NET-CHILE RED
221 OLIVE BRNZE/CANE-PEAR-CL OLIVE
281 NUTMEG/SPICE-DK ORANGE-CANE
441 MARINA/CLRWTR-AQUAMRN-MDTN BL
002 MIDNIGHT FOG/MED CHAR-OXYGEN
062 LIGHT BONE/RED MAHOGANY
World Cup Edition:
082 NIGHT MOSS/LIGHTENING
132 WHITE/APPLE GREEN-LIGHTENING
741 LIGHTENING/LAPIS-GREEN APPLE
6th Edition:
331
621 JULEP/MYSTIC TEAL
011 BLACK/WHITE-BLACK
SL Edition:
271 KHAKI/MED CURRY-CINDER
661 MYTH/MYTH/LT BONE/ABYSS
hTM Edition:
001 BLK/GRAPH-MED GREY-M SILVER
911 RAINBOW/WHITE-LINEN
271 DARK MOCHA/MEDIUM CURRY-BEACH
221 IRON/BUFF-CHINO
251 KHAKI/QUASAR PRPLE-RAINBOW
261 KHAKI/VARS RED-RAINBOW
211 KHAKI/NET-LT STONE

Don't even bother to comment, I know none of you actually give a sh*t, except the GF, who thinks I'm deranged. Normal service will resume shortly.

Totally dropped the ball yesterday, so my apologies for any fruitless clicks. I always say I've sworn off HK vinyl toys, but you have to make an exception for Michael Lau. He's the reigning king of adult figurines, with numbers of his main pieces so limited that prices are sky high. Starting today Maharishi have new 6" Gardener Series figures on sale. I imagine the queue is already long, but at one per person you might have a shot at bagging one. Only 150 available outside of Asia, so these little monkeys will be worth $$$.
You can read more about Maharishi, and it's founder Hardy Blechman, one of very few people to have his own likeness as a Michael Lau figure, over at Evil Monito. And of course there's a sneaker involved, the ultra-rare Fiberops x Michael Lau x Nike Wildwood ACG, Fatlace have the details in their preview section.

Great article about the Spiral Jetty by the real Robert Smithson.

Swedish art terrorists kidnap cow parade cow, and threaten to execute it, if their (reasonable) demands are not met.

Now Rick is dead the unsubstantiated allegations fly: "He pointed to his mound of drugs and said to me, 'Dig in partner.'"

Carpoon is the ultimate car-mod. Xzibit needs to pimp my Smart with this laser guided 6 tonne vehicle hunting harpoon.

Bonjour paresse the new French slacker bible, has been getting a ton of press in the UK. It advises a policy of cruising through work, keeping your head down by aiming for minimum productivity, and maximum corporate enculturation. Now while I know that statistically 60% of you are currently reducing your productivity by reading this from work, (heck all of you are reducing your productivity), I would like to take a stand against the message of Bonjour paresse.
Last night for the first time I performed an unsupervised caesarean. That's pretty serious stuff, for me at least. While I knew I was technically able to open the abdomen, deliver the baby, and repair the damage, never before had I done it without the watchful eye of a more experienced surgeon. It's a bit like flying solo for the first time. I'm only three years out of medical school, and it seems like a real accomplishment to be able to handle my own "major" (as in major-op and minor-op). For a moment I was swelled with pride, that I was doing something so eminently skillful when so many of my friends were rotting away in middle management. But the truth is, everyone I know is doing something really skillful. No-one is pushing paper, they are all writing novels, producing TV or movies, programming cutting edge software, and basically pursuing their dreams full tilt. One of my oldest and dearest friends, whose job in emerging market tracking sounds very dry, showed me a copy of his weekly newsletter (don't sign up, it costs almost $2000 a year). Not only is he writing about some extremely techy shizzle in a highly readable way, but he gets to drop mad puns in his headlines. A recent article about Premier of the Chinese State Council Wen Jiabao was subtitled: "Wen's World: Party Time". Not just one genius pun, but two hidden in a single headline.
So despite what Corrine Maier might claim in her guide to goofing off, most people, regardless of career choice, are doing something they really love, and doing it really well. If you are stuck doing something you hate, then I can thoroughly recommend quitting and taking up beekeeping. On the other hand if your escape plan is buying a lottery ticket for tonight, steer clear of 4/16/18/21/32/41 because you'll be sharing the jackpot with me.

Having said all that, it doesn't mean I'm not insanely jealous of my old college mucker Trent Ford who has been staging a veritable international love-fest with Scarlett "I get paid to do this?" Johansson. Unbelievable, he has a decent degree from Cambridge, and he abandons the cerebral life to canoodle with 19 year old (still!) starlets. Bastard. (with thanks to Hydro-Jo for the very thorough linkage.)

The ambient orb is a wireless glowing stock tracker to help dotcom millionires monitor their NASDAQ options. Now the concept has found a broader market with the Wave Pillow. It's an alarm clock/pillow for surfers, that wakes you up by vibrating on an intensity scale determined by local wave heights. Awesome swell? You'll be up early. Flat as a pancake? You get a lie in. Brilliant.

What with it being Castro's 78th Birthday, the Motor Cycle Diaries Movie being imminent, and Che's bloody corpse appearing in this morning's Guardian, I've been discussing Cuba a lot recently. My brother implausibly claimed that Fidel had survived an exploding cigar assasination attempt by the mafia. Closer research reveals that truth is stranger than fiction.

Worst news ever? Big Brother 5 imbecile Jason Cowen is a fan of Nike Air Wovens. That muscly douchebag will ruin it for the cool kids like me. Incidentally my collection has severely stalled at 18 pairs. If I'm ever going to pick up the remaining 23 pairs, I'll need to crack Yahoo.co.jp auctions. At the moment I'm hamstrung by a lack of Japanese skills, and the reluctance of the sellers to ship overseas. If anyone knows a kind soul in Tokyo who'd be prepared to place proxy bids, and smuggle rare kicks through customs on my behalf, I'd be eternally grateful.

As far as I'm aware no-one's blog has ever been used as evidence in a libel courtcase. Liquid Generation are either pretty damn certain Mary-Kate is a coke fiend, or else they ought to be appearing in court soon. Before the cease and desist orders put a stop to the fun, enjoy Mary-Kate Olsen: Crackman, in which Mary-Kate must clear the maze of lines of coke, and the power pills are diet pills, natch. (See I used it!)

Scandal at the BBC! Not quite Jayson Blair level deception, but I was disappointed to see the same stock photo passed off as an actual news photo in these two bee swarm news articles.

List of company name etymologies.

Giant squid captured. In college I used to be regularly invited to Sunday lunch with Andrew Huxley. He had won his Nobel Prize for neuro-physiological experiments performed on the "giant squid axon". That's actually just a large neuron from a regular sized squid. It's so big it could be cannulated with the naked eye, which allowed his ground breaking research. However at each and every Sunday lunch a clueless arts/humanities student would unwittingly confuse the giant squid axon with actual giant squid. Professor Huxley had actually seen a real giant squid when he worked at Wood's Hole, and despite repetition the ensuing story was always fascinating. Sadly they always served a roast, never calimari rings.

Take someone called George Lazenby, the actual Dr Oliver Sacks, one kilogram of iridium pellets, the largest arc furnace in the US, and three "batshit crazy russians", and what do you get? The best blog entry you'll read all year. This is the kind of awesome geek stuff the internet was invented for.

Pixelfield is a really nice, old school playability meets new school design game. Excellent.

The Olympig Movement ought to provide a few moments of chubby naturist Latvian fun. (Kinda NSFW, but so healthy and well, natural).It's so well made it's not immediately obvious whether it's an actual McDonalds promo or an anti-McDonalds adbust. The new McDonald's salad's aren't actually so awful, and you do get a free pedometer. I've been wearing one on each hip, trying to figure out if I'm a pure ambiturner, or if I have a preference. (Which after all is one of the perils of being really really good-looking.)

Gurdjieff and me
When I was in college, I was at least briefly interested in the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff. He was a mystic and con-man in the first half of the twentieth century, who essentially founded an ongoing cult. The "cult" is alive and well on the internet. It's somewhat akin to Scientology, certainly as creepy, but less fiscal. I cannot really recommend anything about Gurdjieff, except that he is always eminently quotable:
'If you wish to succeed in anything then ask a woman for advice and do the opposite'
However to get back to the point of this little ramble: Gurdjieff's central idea was that inner peace and self-awareness were best acheived while engaged in simple work, in the presence of other sympathetic people.
I'm not claiming to have acheived nirvana in the past few days, but I've been busy doing simple things: building beehives, harvesting tomatoes, figs and apples, and operating (which is surprisingly brainless and automatic when it's going well). I've moved back into the bosom of the family, and I do feel calm and peaceful. So I guess my point is that sometimes even a balding mustachioed charlatan can speak the truth, and sometimes frantic information hunger and excess socializing is not what makes me happy.
If you're feeling somewhat ooky kooky you could check out one of one of Gurdjieff's many rather obtuse books, or if you just want a laugh you can peruse the more outlandish internet outposts of his "teaching". Of course it's not a cult for nothing. You might want to test your susceptibility with the cult-o-meter, before you delve any deeper.
Having just extolled the virtues of peaceful introspection, I'll be on call again tonight, so you can expect the normal service, of mind rotting links and pointless trivia, to resume then.

Monday's update was lost in a horrific internet cache pile-up. From the wreckage I've managed to retrieve a few precious fragments:

I really, really want to keep goats. Luckily through the miracle of heifer.org now you can give me one. Feeling generous to the tune of $500? Send me a pair of water buffalo. The only catch is that I need to register as a third world subsistence farmer; but if you are serious about giving me the gift that keeps on giving, then I'm sure I can overcome that administrative hurdle.

Londoners have long since given up any sense of "community" which is probably why craigslist : london is still sucking. Strangely though the insane ladies of NYC, perhaps having run out of US men to harangue, have started attempting to snag any available British men, via our personals column. SATC has been far too influential.

incomple.com is very...
Actually it's quite a good gag, but a terrible waste of time and precious resources for the poor clerks of the Internet Registry.

I've finally vacated my flat, after nightmarish weeks of hefting plant pots, sneakers, and medical textbooks down the stairs. On the night I left I spotted a new Banksy Rat right outside the front door. Omen or what? Meanwhile a little way along my new old street Banksy has been causing even more of a commotion.

Utter origami sickness.

My new mobile phone has more memory than my brain. That's not humbling, it's just depressing. I actually have no faith at all in the experimental methodology here, but it's a fascinatingly low estimate of brain power.

House of 1000 Corpses 2: "two gangs of bloodthirsty bodily mutilation enthusiasts" go on a "bloody roadtrip". HooTC was simply the most enjoyable scary movie all last year; it just cranked and cranked the sickening psycho/flesh torture levels until you wanted to sneak into the next theatre to see Finding Nemo. The sequel has my buzz-a-rific seal of approval.

Hamlet: the text adventure is good, but as warned earlier this week Weboggle is really where it's at in online games. It's so addictive I've been brushing up my 3 and 4 letter words. My top rank from roughly 25 games of 4x4 Boggle is 2nd (from a field of 50ish), whereas the 5x5 heads have me totally beat. Like Adam Yauch says: "I'm the King of Boggle, There is none higher, I get eleven points off the word QUAGMIRE." (But remember if you're playing QUAGMIRE, don't forget to put down QUAG and MIRE separately too.)

Marilyn Vos Savant (who popularised the Monty Hall Problem, and has the Guinness record for world's highest IQ) is sometimes wrong.

Krushchev to Nixon: "Don't you have a machine that puts food into the mouth and pushes it down? Many things you've shown us are interesting but they are not needed in life... We have a saying, if you have bedbugs you have to catch one and pour boiling water into the ear." Discover the incredible story behind the $9,999 Leisurama prefab beach house.

"Seiko Epson does not have an immediate plan to commercialize the new robot. That will depend on how much popularity it acquires, said Seiko Epson." The new robot is so fricking cool, he probably drinks shots of Jagermeister for breakfast, and has group sex with Peabs and Coz. If you all visit the link he will get more popular, and then maybe we can all have one.

FEBO have this really great jingle promoting their dutch fried products. It's so good it makes me want to drop out, move to Amsterdam, become utterly dependent on primo skunk, and then satisfy the intense resultant munchies with these cholesterol bombs. Actually I kinda want to do that anyway, but the song is good.

Clown porn must be stopped, but raping a clown is a laughing matter.

Dizzee Rascal + Bobby Gillespie = Dizzee Gillespie, Keith Richards + Rick James = Richard James, Jack Black + Connie Francis = Black Francis. It's witty, it's pretty, it's Various Artists: Playing Cards.

Badgas is a jolly funny sort of website, they have a running competition for Lynndie England Impersonation and a detailed guide to the semiotics of fried chicken. Plus they linked to this brilliant all-time heaviest people list. Inspirational stuff.

Personalized Pez Dispensers.

NSFW alert: Crazy Engrish Guide to Mickey Masa, porn star, moron, and inventor of the "helicopter fuck".

Rodcorp has a guide to which Underground stations are so close it is better to walk between them. This sort of information should remain privy only to actual Londoners. The massed legions of Northern twats who are grossly inflating London property prices should remain comically handicapped by their complete failure to acquire London geography.

Who would win?
Navy SEAL or shark? Shark.
Africanized bees or bee exterminator? Bees.
120,000 bees, or a bunch of kids with rocks? Tie. (Children, bystanders, firefighters, news reporters all stung. Lucky beekeeper bags 500 lbs of honey. Lucky construction team wins contract to rebuild wall containing 500lbs of honey.)

UPDATE 15/08/04: You think you're keeping abreast of important bee news and then the biggest story of all sneaks under the radar:

Who would win?
Angry bees or Paris and Nicole? Paris and Nicole (but only after being rescued by Christina Milian).

Paris 'n' Fred get all familiar with Pharell promoting The Billionaire Boys Club. Is it related to the TV show of the same name? I doubt it. Either way, you can look at the trainers, but you can't touch, because they all sold out months ago.

Fuck the twin cyclonic catastrophes attacking Florida: 100km wide ant super organism eats Melbourne. That's real environmental disaster news.

Umpire a FLASH tennis match between Simon and Garfunkel. The game is so fantastically good, I think refereeing sims may be a whole new genre.

Weboggle (Web-Boggle geddit) is so utterly best evs.

While on an utter time wasting mission, I much enjoyed this beautiful FLASH realisation of mastermind. Oddly the black and white peg code is reversed compared to the way I played it as a kid, but that only adds to the challenge.

Why is it that you never know how much you don't know?
Today I dis-abused myself of three separate long-held mis-apprehensions:
1. The Bourne Supremacy is not the sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair.
Seems obvious now doesn't it, but for weeks I've been dying to see The Bourne Supremacy, slightly wondering why Matt Damon has the lead role, not Pierce Brosnan, and a little confused that the plot doesn't seem to be about cat-burglaring. The sad thing is that I fricking hated The Bourne Identity.
2. "Natch" is short for "Naturally".
I have been trying to use the word "Natch" for months, but only today did I realise that I had no idea at all what it means. And now it's too late because truncated words are officially passe.
3. Tummy buttons are either innies or outies because nature made them that way, not because mid-wives and doctors tie different sorts of knots.
This one is so demented. I've worked on a labour ward for over two years, and all this time I've maintained my childhood delusion about umbilicae. There is no knotting, it just makes itself that way.

Did you think there was nothing dangerous on the internet anymore? Imagine winding up as the winning bidder on the most expensive pair of shoes ever sold. These "Goldenrod" Dunks were general release in the UK for just £59.99, but poor kimo7tw wound up bidding $846,560.22 for them. The selling fees on that will have cost macgyver1808 over $14,000 as soon as the auction closed. Hilarity itself.

And I'm not going to get into the habit of posting two sets of links a day, but via Dani Mac: How Andy Dick celebrates the death of Rick James? By snorting mountains of coke and bitchslapping assorted strangers! (can't seem to locate the permalink, but it's today's Page Six) SLAP!

While watching test cricket today, I was struck by the fact that the white Bajan commentator sounded Welsh. Some time ago, I worked with a white Bajan doctor, and she too sounded strangely celtic to my cloth ears. Obviously if I heard Brian Lara speak, I would never mistake him for a welshman. There are two possible hypotheses for this auditory illusion:
1. White-caribbean and afro-caribbean people have different accents, and the white accent is actually similar to the welsh accent.
2. A deep seated sub-conscious racism prevents me from accepting white people with Bajan accents as actually being caribbean, so I am transmuting their accent to the nearest acceptable "caucasian" accent.
I would never want to be thought of as racist, so I propose a small experiment. While looking at the picture below of Ron Davies, disgraced welsh politician, listen to the samples of caribbean speech available here (Jamaican) and here (Bajan).

Now perform the experimental control by staring hard at the picture of Brian Lara, while re-listening to the above linked speech samples.

Unfortunately the Speech Accent Archive has no examples of Welsh accents for comparison, but I think the experiment is effective. To my ear the Bajan accent is easily interpretable as welsh even when associated with Brian Lara. The Jamaican accent however is resolutely caribbean even paired with Ron Davies. Please report your findings via the comments. Am I inherently racist, just deaf, or the discoverer of hitherto unknown trans-atlantic phonetic connections?

Sneaker Vending Machine, ideal for midnight moments when you crave that Deadstock hit.

fish, plant, rack is an AI project that uses a blind elephant fish to control a robot, that in turn maintains a hydroponically grown plants.

Homeland Insecurity Advisory System is like Hot Or Not for policy decisions in the War on Terror™. Voting so far has led to an alert level of: "FRIGHTENED; significant risk of government failure."

Insane japanese (of course) animated gifs. Where else would a giant pink teddy bear gnaw out the jugulars of an infant?

The Seinfeld FAQ (SeinFAQ) is better than I could possibly imagine. Especially the list of fictional movies the characters have watched.

The latest beekeeping news is that following a further incredible harvest yesterday (no stings, yippee-kay-ay motherfuckers) a further 26lbs of sweet sweet honey have flooded the market. Unfortunately since demand still far outstrips supply, the price remains static at £3 per jar.

From woz.org, Steve Wozniak's blog:
"A Reader Asks: Dear Woz, When you call Apple to order stuff and you give them your name, do people recognize you and say "Hey, your (SIC) that dude that created Apple!"
Woz: I order Apple stuff online. I doubt that any human ever sees the names. But once I ordered a gigabit ethernet option. Apple noticed two months later that only two of these had been ordered, both by me! I do get noticed every time I buy shareware, and that brings me a lot of T-shirts that I get good use out of."

Contrary to the informed articles you might have read, RFID chips are an evil tool of Satan/Rumsfeld (delete as appropriate). I needed one yesterday, after one of my brother's gerbils escaped over the garden wall. Fortunately August is National Microchipping Month. Heck since the perks are so good maybe I'll get one while I'm at it. (For those concerned, the rodent was safely rescued and re-united with its mate after 8 hours of freedom.)

It's not easy being a fictional hero.
I caught up with the remarkably well reviewed, Before Sunset this weekend. I have a massive soft spot for the first movie, and for Linklater's other "talky-walky" movies (Slacker, Waking Life). I was extremely nervous that Before Sunset might not live up to the hype, but I was captivated through each of its 80 minutes.
The brief recap: An American author (Jessie) is on a book tour in Paris promoting an autobiographical novel concerning a single night he spent with a French girl (Celine) 9 years previously (Before Sunrise). He is reunited with Celine, and walks through Paris in real-time discussing the intervening years and again musing on the path of love. Both characters reveal that the strength of their passion on that single night has over-shadowed their love-lives, and in the course of 80 minutes their love is re-kindled.
Linklater has explained that one of his reasons for making the movie was the curiosity people have had for the fate of the two characters from the original film. He was also intensely aware during the production that making a bad movie would blight fans' perception of the first movie.
The original movie has a highly ambiguous ending, and although that movie must "stand alone", any ambiguity is laid to rest by the plotting of the second movie. The characters "Jessie and Celine" had been briefly reprised in Walking Life as one of Wiley Wiggins' lucid dreams, but the "story" of Jessie and Celine is now continuous between the two "Before" movies.
In the movie Celine complains about being used as a character in a work of fiction; she is angry that the book has stirred up old issues. I myself feature as a fictional hero this month, but my concerns are rather different. My father's latest novel is out next week, and the central character is based rather directly on me. Luckily it's not about a male obstetrician, instead the character is a female art historian, convicted of stealing a Tiffany stained glass window. It's not stirring up any issues for me, but I do have a slight sense of dread.
Like Jessie and Celine who have "lived" in people's minds these last 9 years, I hate the idea that my fictional character might have more longevity than I do. I wouldn't want her to appeal to people more than I actually do, so that she might be cherished in people's memories long after they've forgotten me entirely.
Go right ahead and ignore my concerns; you can begin forgetting me now, since the book is already available from Amazon and all good bookshops.

In other bookish news Ben Stiller is planning the worst movie ever. CivilWarLand In Bad Decline can only be a cinematic disaster. The source material short story concerns a couple who live and work as disenchanted "Cast Members" re-enacting civil war era roles in a crumbling historical theme park. Although the book is brilliant, combining the bleakest elements of Orwell and Kafka with the merest smattering of cruel humour, it is 100% not an appropriate vehicle for the comedy stylings of Mr Stiller.

"Blogfish is best eaten wrapped in newspaper, with salt and vinegar. Blogfish is the fin end of the wedge." Blogfish quite clearly rules, I can't seem to figure out its workings though. Please could someone techy explain it to me.

For $9 Fontifier will make a font from a scanned sample of your handwriting, which is completely useless to me, because my hand-writing is illegible. But it's a bargain none-the-less.

"Lets make paper craft model from 3-dimentional (sic) data", lets indeed, because Pepakura helps you create the most astonishing origami you ever laid eyes on.

eBay the smart person's way with eBay RRS feeds and last second automated sniping.

Marvel Super Heroes Guide to NYC, please can someone stateside TiVO this and seed it as a torrent, please, pretty please.

Make multi-coloured vases from mini-Coke bottles and other hipster craft projects.

Why the Smurfs were commies.

Nicolson Baker reads (or at least is aware of) blogs (plus a review of Checkpoint). He is the single author whose blog I would most like to read, I furtively yearn for the moment I discover his anonymous typepad site.

The rarest, and most expensive, unauthorised photo of the Pope in an unguarded moment. Bid now!

Fuck Legend Dead (via)

A real neologism-fest: submit a new word to The Fictionary before the end of August and win $50(US!)

Finally Ren and Stimpy comes to DVD including "Son Of Stimpy" the only banned episode.

Koko the Gorilla is having subfertility problems. This is my nightmare, exactly.

And this is my perfect dream: Land Pirates: an epic saga of skateboard debauchery. Rad skate action with a backing soundtrack of sea shanties and pirate chants.

Similarly August 17th is Rodney Mullen's 38th birthday, that's like way old for a pro-skater, so "Extreme!" are celebrating with a whole night of Rodney programs.

And the crazy helper monkey, dubbed the "attack macaque", turned out to be part of a social security scam.

Low Culture is an A-List sort of blog, that does a good line in "compare and contrast" entries, often pointing out little plagiarisms, or fashion dopplegangers. Today both Kottke and bOINGbOING jumped on the Shopsin's meme, (as covered here with reference to the beloved Soup Nazi back in January.)
Cory Doctorow points out that the menu: "reads like the label on a bottle of Dr Bronner's soap". Look back to what Low Culture said a full seven months ago: "...denser than a Dr. Bronner's Soap label."
Obviously its OK to "borrow" links from other blogs, but full-on unattributed plagiarism? As they say in the letters page of Private Eye: Coincidence? I think we should be told.
While I take the time to trash the blogosphere A-Listers, check out the Kottke front page (as of August 6th) and see how in practically one breath he declares himself to be an "inconspicuous" consumer, who never wastes money on gadgets or worthless shiny upgrades, but who "is ready in a second" to buy this Marc Newson phone.
Not for any real reason, but these brief links are musically themed:

Sasha Frere Jones has a blog full of beautiful photos, serious discussions about music, and lots of baseball. He deserves your interest, first because he put 61 albums on his "Best of 2003" list, and second he's considering naming his first son after Nomar Garciaparra. Incidentally the GF and I argued whether it would be cool to name our (postulated) first son "OJ". I say it has cachet, and is likely to be unique at time of birth, she says I'm a moron.

Kid Carpet is the world's foremost exponent of shit-hop, and he makes funny songs from odd samples, including a great cover version of Van Halen's Jump.

John Sakamoto writes a weekly column for the Eye Magazine, called The Anti-Hit List. Each week he sends you spinning off into mad musical directions: he's always eclectic but not necessarily obscure, and always utterly engaging. From his recommendation, I bring you Park Spliced, which is Blur's Parklife given the Bastard treatment, not once but twice, by 20 different remixers.

You don't post for one day, and what happens? Rick James goes and dies. Most disturbingly, I've lost all my mobile phone numbers, so I woke up this morning to an anonymous text just saying: "Rick James is dead, bitch!". Until I checked Google news I thought it was my first website related death threat. Anyway the reason for my unscheduled absence from these pages, was that I called in sick for the first time in almost two years. There's a steadily increasing spate of blog related firings, and I'm already a little anxious about the long hours embezzled from the NHS in preparing these crafted entries. So you get the point: I was sick yesterday, far too sick to spend time using a computer, much too sick to enjoy the hottest day of the year, and certainly too sick to bottle the honey harvest.

Alvin and the Chipmunks slowed down to a funeral dirge. Truly horrible.

Tough Pigs are way too into the Muppets, they even review the new Fraggle Rock DVD.

Car Parking Sim (save it for a rainy day).

Bionic Dolphins-a-go-go.

How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb?

I don't want to give you guys link burnout, but I had a really slack day at work, so here's a whole bundle of random hyper-whatnot. Oh, and there's nothing whatsoever to do with Andre the Giant.

Rick James: "Crack is for poor people". Kinda like Paris Hilton: "Diet Coke is for fat people"

Douglas Coupland's play is happening at Stratford, but only for three performances in October.

Almost the whole of TT5B as a shitty real stream.

RoyalMag review songs about food, and give you the update on Hulk Hogan's post WWF career, essential stuff.

Hogzilla, not battling Pig-o-saurus or nothing, but still cool.

Better Than Yours kinda shares my blog template, and it's also full of really random unconnected linkage, shit you might even like it more than this site.

Villain Supply DotCom for when your henchmen are low on torture equipment. (complete with blog of efforts toward world domination).

Fools Map that gets steadily worse and stupider as people submit dimwit comments revealing their lack of understanding of geography.

History of the IMDb. Only yesterday I was harking back to the pre-IMDb days, when Halliwell's was the cine-bible.

Cool flash strategy game, which is too easy against the computer, but vicious multiplayer style.

Bill Gates tries to buy Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi just chuckles into his oolong tea and strokes his long white beard.

"What do you expect? His cholesterol is through the roof" Mojo runs amok. Suurriously who would choose a macaque as a helper monkey? On a related note, sometimes two heads are not better than one, as maniacs attempt to name every Simpsons character ever.

While the wait for Seinfeld on DVD continues, it seems some people have taken matters into their own hands with extremely blatant defiance of copyright law.

Criterion Collection: Slacker to include Linklater's "lost" "unseen" "legendary" first feature It's Impossible To Learn To Plow By Reading Books.

Small and possibly racist guide to distinguishing Duurty South slang from Pittsburgh ghetto slang. Whaaatt?

Be sure to order only from Jim at Maple Ridge Vineyard because PATTI DOES NOT TAKE ORDERS.

The Gotti Family: still breaking new ground on the frontiers of bling.

And how could I forget? Peabs is back and he's still gunning (and snorting, and flizzum flazzlin) for the presidency, hogsviously.

Drinking, gambling, and reality TV
It's my position that even moderate consumption of reality TV is a mind numbing vice; and that if you want to indulge you ought to keep it private. However today I'm making an exception, because there's money at stake. Following the grand success of my predicting Greece's astonishing Euro 2004 win, I rolled the £30 winnings into a crazed 10 to 1 shot on Stuart to win Big Brother 5. For the sensible non-BB5 watchers, Stuart is a good looking, normalish, amicable chap, who is competing against three campy drama queens and one wimpy art student. I was sure 10 to 1 was great odds, given that teen girls contribute most of the vote, and that the other housemates are obnoxious lunatics. How wrong I was. Head over to Best Betting to discover that poor Stu is now a 50 to 1 outsider to win. All the money has gone on demented Portugese transexual Nadia. Please gallant, loyal readers, make my dream come true and vote Stu.

"CIA asks Bush to discontinue blog." These kind of "blogging-receives-mainstream-attention" type links, are just irresistible to insecure bloggers. This rather poorly conceived spoof (which rips off Bill Clinton's Blog) has been no.1 on the blogdex ever since it was published.

Robots are now outside the law on the streets of Tokyo, or should that be Neo-Tokyo?

Some people don't just watch The Chappelle show for the celebrity reminiscences about the glory days of cocaine, some of us watch it for the shoes. Dave has an astonishing collection of Nike Dunks, wearing a different boxfresh pair for each and every show. So when I saw the news that Dave had scored $50mil for series 3 and 4, and was "vacationing in Paris", I got a little hunch what he might be buying to celebrate. I'm wearing Paris Dunk SBs bitch! (That joke will nevarr stop being funny.)

Getting linked by an a-lister (stare hard at the word piece) is so completely b-list; I couldn't be more proud, baby I've made it!

Farmageddon is completely happening again, next bank holiday weekend. Last year was completely J J Redick. Bands, drinks, stage diving, stolen hats, clearly the party of the year. You have to be invited to attend, but email me and I'll wangle you onto the guest list. If you've already booked Reading tickets you can still enjoy much of the fun via Passed Out Wookies (url way better than content, sadly).

The infuriatingly crap GLC single "Guns don't kill people, rappers do." is on constant Radio 1 rotation. It seems to be unerringly prescient, since Big Lurch has been convicted of murder: "tearing open of 21 year old Tynisha Ysais' chest and eating of her lung". (It was the PCP that made him do it).

"Greetings from Freddie Prinze Jnr's stomach lining." (keep clicking for more and more inanity).

The Borat Soundboard or alternatively Ali G's Harvard Commencement Speech.

I've not actually heard them, but based on word of mouth, and incredible barnets, I'm recommending Towers of London, as the The Darkness it's OK to enjoy.

With all the furore about Manhunt and ultra-violent video games I feel I ought to have a disclaimer before linking to these flash games: Stick Avalanche and Suicide Bob. Instead you can just promise me you won't go out and kill any stick men.

The Enemies go upmarket tonight with another unmissable gig, this time in Mayfair.

And finally...AT-AT Walkers shagging, so best.

It's a classic claim of pop psychology that moving house is one of the most stressful life events. If you check the original Holmes Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale you find it's actually only slightly more stressful than Christmas, and no more stressful than being "presently in the pre-menstrual period". None-the-less with the introduction of European Working Time yesterday, my bump up the career ladder on Wednesday (from being a lowly SHO, to an exalted SSHO), and moving back home with my parents next week, I manage to score an astonishing 180. That's the equivalent of going to jail, getting divorced, and going through the menopause all at the same time. I don't actually feel stressed though. Perhaps due to the residual blood alcohol from Nobber's 19th century themed birthday party. Most guests plumped for full Victorian regalia, so the GF and I tried to sabotage things a little by constructing hats to represent smallpox and cholera. Best party guest was camp cuban playwright Cheddy who looked exactly like camp floridian rapper Sisqo. Note to self: remember never to bleach own hair and rap about gussets.

The Game Neverending looks so cool I might have to abandon any career aspirations I might once have had. The beta-test starts soon.

While waiting you can occupy yourself with this neato Table Football Sim

I am astonishingly impecunious, mostly because of the wall of sneakers obstructing the view from my bedroom. The wishlist for this month will sadly remain just a wishlist (unless you are all feeling very generous): Ricky Powell Vs JB, Nike "Considered" Range, Essense Vs Methamphibian

Banksy finally got photographed, and the photo got into the Evening Standard.

Pom Wonderful looks so delicious and so beautiful.

Uncle Grambo meets Gallo and raves. Officially jealous.

Steve Jobs gets pancreatic cancer and lives, then writes to his employees. Not wanting to poop on the party, but biopsy histology can be wrong, and it will be 10 days before the final histology is available.

Legal Beastie Boys MP3s from an Austrian date on the Hello Nasty Tour: part 1 and part 2, including a couple of rarities.

I know this is a self-professed politics-free zone, but I'm only trying to help an old lady acheive her dying wish.

I tried so hard not to get hyped about EpIII:RotS, but then I heard about the giant wookie battle and my heart melted. Poor (by which I mean billionaire) George is trying so hard to appease the "real" fans, that at least for now I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. If I hear even a sniff of more characters like Elan Sleazebaggano I'm boycotting the whole movie though.

All the Pagerank 10 sites, which I swear is amazing reading for net nerds.

Scwabble replace individual Scrabble tiles, for just 95c (the eleventh one is free). Assuming they are an unofficial source, scavenging their tiles from dead Scrabble sets, I think their business model is shaky. Imagine if they get a run of orders for the letter X, they could hit serious cash flow problems. Personally I'm still hoping for a set of Protiles for christmas, to stop my cheating relatives feeling for the blanks.

Am I the world's third most famous living non-musical Rufus?
Almost everyone who is called Rufus and who is actually famous, and currently alive, is a musician: Rufus Wainwright (soulfull gay icon), Rufus Reid (jazz bassist), Rufus McGovern (alt.country rocker), Rufus (as in Chaka Khan), Rufus Harris (christian recording artist), Rufus Campbell (pro-bagpiper), not to mention Rufus Sun and Rufus Grove who are bands and therefore don't really count.
Scouring Google, you will find that this is now the 50th site listed when searching for "Rufus". I was most curious about the other intervening Rufi. Number one most famous living non-musical Rufus is definitely Rufus Sewell (UK actor), and number two is probably Rufus Beck (German actor), after that it degenerates into a bit of a squabble for third place. Weeding out the distractors: Rufus Guitars (no Rufus actually involved), Rufus Leonard (another fictional brand name), and Rufus ShinRa (a character from Final Fantasy), we get left with only 3 challengers:
Rufus Young (astronomer), whom I'm confidently discounting, because he provides zero personal information, and no website update in the last 8 years, so he may well be one of the many non-living Rufi.
Rufus Green (Acting web editor for the National Maritime Museum), he gets ditched down the list, because he's only in an "acting" position, not even a permanent web editor.
Rufus Sanders (trainee teacher), whom I'm rejecting merely because his web design is cluttered, and he updates a lot less often than me.
Q.E.D. I am the third most famous, living, non-musical Rufus, who would have thought it? Feel free to submit other Rufi for my scrutiny, but I assure you my analysis has been quite comprehensive.