| Tuesday, April 29, 2003 |
 | So, here we are, after a wasted weekend (oh, who am I kidding, it was a lovely weekend, and the fact that I have not yet used my suddenly expanded free time to cure all the world's ills is hardly a sign of permanent and irremediable evil on the part either of myself or of the world. Oh yes.
Part of the joy of unemployment is, of course, that I can scour the Internet for the least relevant links ever. Let's see now...
First up, of course, we have the mantric power of Electric Six's Gay Bar, as covered by the Rathergood Kittens and Tony Blair and George Bush. The latter is perhaps the most perfect single moment the Internet has yet provided.
Elsewhere, from Linkmachinego probably, the 12 dumbest comic book covers ever.
Elsewhere, and just as likely from Linkmachinego, the Spectrum games Top Trumps. Wrong. So wrong. It occurs to me that mine is probably the generation that was utterly shafted by this lot. I remember, before having my own computer, being addicted to Football Manager on the Spectrum of some family friends. How little dignity we had left to us. Ah, the days when Savage represented a glowing explosion of improbable colour...
And finally - Ben looking uncannily like one of the Aquaphibians from Stingray. This is a photograph so bad as to defy physics. It looks not only nothing like Ben, except in the most general particulars, but also nothing like any human being in history. Seriously, kids, he's a very handsome man.
I know. I'm sorry. I promise to do better. I've just been really stressed....
(0) comments
| |
| Friday, April 25, 2003 |
| Sleep cures everything but insomnia
Ach, insomnia. My chest hurts and my body feels canted at the wrong angle. This is bad, and yet worse is that tomorrow I must be entertaining, twinkle-toed and embarking on the great quest for new employment. That, a compassioante visit and a birthday party. Maybe the future can wait until Monday...
So, yes, no more job. It's a curious thing - this job lasted longer than my degree, which is a fairly hornswoggling concept, and perhaps my identity has become too intimately tied up in what I did ten hours a day.
Had. Had become. Of course.
Still, every exit is also an entrance, as my firearms tutor used to say. The world is a sparkling, diamond thing of infinite possibility. Unfortunately, until I can get a nice dose of curative sleep, those possibilities will extend to listening to MP3s and vaguely wondering what happens now.
Seriously. I've been unemployed for about three weeks in my entire life, back when I was a blushing recent graduate recently having walked out on my first job, living in a cupboard in Islington. Lots of walks. Job centres. Limited companies. Limited outgoings. Vegetable markets. Museum visits. What does one do?
Plenty of time to find out, I suppose. Rest, sleep, dream. And write. Write, goddammit. This could be a golden opportunity to explore the very depths of my creative mediocrity.
But first sleep. How do I get to sleep?
(0) comments
| |
| Tuesday, April 22, 2003 |
| So what's been up with me, while Operation Sorry, You Can't Get into the Talks on the Future Government of Iraq without a Tie. Got to Have Standards, You Know has been saving the world for democracy?
Speaking of which, this, via Marcia is class - the Homeland Security Threat Level Monitor.
Well, not a lot, but what there was will have to wait - called away.
(0) comments
| |
|
| My new favourite word is indubitably "prill". Prill has a startling quantity of meanings, none of them apparently related, and apparently also none of them making any sense whatsoever. Observe:
1) The brill
2) To flow
3) A stream
Don't be fooled. "To flow" and "a stream" are just a set-up for the gloriously bewildering:
4) (a) A nugget of virgin metal. (b) Ore selected for excellence
5) The button of metal from an assay
Getting dizzy yet? Slight nosebleed?
6) A fish allied to the turbot
That's "allied". Not "related". Contractually obligated to defend the turbot, with their lives if necessary.
Apparently this last definition, the fish with the connections to the hadowy world of the turbot, is "much prized in the UK for its taste".
Really. Dude. I have never seen this fish before in my life.
(0) comments
| |
| Wednesday, April 16, 2003 |
| So, let me make sure I've got this right.
The US wants to lift sanctions against Iraq, on the reasonably coherent logic that the conditions under which they were levelled no longer pertain.
However, one of the conditions of the end of sanctions is the the Iraqi WMD program is shown to be abandoned. Right now, we can't even find the WMD program, much less confirm its abandonment. So, there is no way currently to prove that the as-yet-unestablished Iraqi administration has destroyed all research into the as-yet-undiscovered weapons of mass destruction.
However, raising the sanctions would require the vote of the UN Security Council. Remember those guys? And, unless the sanctions are lifted, the sale of Iraq's oil still has to go through the aforementioned UN Security Council. Who right now have something of a majority mad-on at the US. Who want sanctions to be lifted.
Is that all right? If so, I can only say, dude....
(0) comments
| |
|
| From our corrections and emendations department, Mr Jack Fear writes to inform:
Last I checked, Muslims revere Abraham as their father in faith, and Muslim tradition places Abraham in the highest of the seven heavens, in the immanent presence of Allah. Indeed, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are referred to collectively as "the Abrahamic faiths" for that very reason-i.e., that they all trace their common origin to this herdsman who forsook all other gods for the One True God-and the sepulchre of Abraham in Hebron ("The Tomb of the Patriarchs") is a site of pilgrimage by all three faiths.s:
This we knew. It was more that Abraham is, as he says, common to Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and as such, given that there is already massive uneasiness among Muslim countries about the US, which has extensively supported Israel, a secular state (with the odd multi-faith holy site inside its borders), but one frequently associated with the Jewish faith, which is currently using methods that have resulted in criticism both from the Arab nations and the UN, most recently yesterday in a series of condemnations universally rejected by the US, and is itself a state run by a Christian with an increasingly narrow distinction of church and state, then a slightly more logical approach might have been to stick to some more Islam-specific celebs.
Just sayin'.
Speaking of Mr. F, who is yet another on my "when I get around to chaning my bloglist" list, he has an interesting question to ask - what if the US were invaded by Canada for its own good?
(0) comments
| |
| Tuesday, April 15, 2003 |
| There was a post here on how interesting it would be to hear Bush talk about the economy today, and in fact even I type the big "W" is speaking about how quick action is needed to stimulate growth. The urgency. The need for swift action. The fact that this is the first time he has mentioned the economy since about a month before the attack on Iraq. But I'm suddenly far more interested in whether Basher Assad is:
a) an inexperienced ruler of a rogue state that must be pacified, by force if necessary.
b) the intelligent and able commander of a country more stable than Iraq, but one in need of encouragement to get its house in order.
c) One half of lesbian teen pop duo TATU.
So pressing is this question, and the subsidiary question "how advanced do the Pentagon's plans for war get before they tell the President?", that I have quite lost interest in the crashing economy and bow wave of unemployment menacing the US, and the possible global depression its economic collapse would make almost certain. Which means, on the bright side, that the war has been a great success on at least one level. In the meantime, I wouldn't stop hanging around outside the Museum of Syria with that wheelbarrow just yet.
Meanwhile, in Ur Jay Garner (who took the time out to mention that it was the birthplace of Abraham. Way to put the Muslims at their ease, dude) is trying to thrash out his cabinet. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, anyone?
(0) comments
| |
|
| From Anna, an interesting little flash game on the geography of the Middle East and North Africa. I did OK on the Middle East, but got decidedly wobbly on North Africa, which just shows which way my chauvinism's blowing.
(0) comments
| |
| Friday, April 11, 2003 |
| Meanwhile, back on the more tiresome business of getting your war off, an interesting article on the development of US strategy here, although Slate loses points by allowing this hilarious balls-up to get through the editors:
Celebrate the six-year-old boy -- he exists, there are thousands of him, he is running down a street in Karbala right now holding a candy bar -- who will not grow up in a world where his father, and his uncle, and his cousin are taken away by anonymous men one night and never come back.
Clearly the subeditors failed to add "in the employ of Saddam Hussein" after "anonymous men". Otherwise Gary Kamiya is skipping a few steps. There is no magic faraway tree growing in Baghdad. There is no democratic government in place, nor any guarantee that said democratic government will be put in place. There is no decision on who is ultimately or even immediately going to run Iraq, beyond Jay Garner, or what their attitude to fathers, uncles and cousins might be. Given that the most successful piece of US-backed régime change thus far ended us up with General Pinochet, maybe we should be a little more circumspect.
Yes, I'm glad that Saddam Hussein's grip on Iraq appears to have been destroyed. Thank you, Mr Bush, thank you Tony Blair, other NBC-broadcast obsequies. I accept that every reservation I had about the wisdom or the justice of this war was utterly wrong. I am boycotting French wine, German sausage and "Russians" by Sting, and eating only tapas. I am now eagerly awaiting the whole thing not turning to shit. Anyone got a roadmap for that? The not-turning-to-shit roadmap? THat would be lovely, thanks.
(0) comments
| |
| Thursday, April 10, 2003 |
| Anyway, now that Operation Can You Drink Office Furniture? has gone basically without a hitch and everything is cool, it's time to turn our attention to the important stuff. LIke what to get the kids for Christmas. I'm loving this Forward Observation Post, which does indeed look like a fucked-up Barbie's palace.
Meanwhile, it's good to see that some souls have not lost sight of the mission while all this war nonsense has been goign on. My heart was truly gladdened by the discovery of another of the social mechanism that, before the Internet, could only really be attempted by Madame Bovary. Peer-review attractiveness clubs.
(0) comments
| |
|
| You, know what with PEOPLE FUCKING DYING, it's easy to lose sight of the really important stuff. You know, what with the annoying distraction of PEOPLE FUCKING DYING. Still, once you get past the tiresome impedimenta of PEOPLE FUCKING DYING, I for one am ready to swear that you'll get a warm fuzzy when you see that some people are seeing the big picture, and the concomitant necessity to squabble with other bloggers.
Consistency in a world gone mad. Gotta love it.
(0) comments
| |
| Wednesday, April 09, 2003 |
| Tomjmahal rears his gingery head again, to direct us to the Cantabrian sister site of Oxford Romance (Motto presumably "thousands of people of approximately your age are drinking more and taking more drugs than at any future point in their entire lives, and you still can't get a fuck").
Worryingly, however, his example of a lost soul screaming for release, who casts herself as Harriet Vane actually seems like a perfectly pleasant sort, as these things go. There are certainly worse role models...
Baz, for example, is quite clearly a more naked version of Mr. Miles, my old PE teacher, who once appeared on Blind Date. See the circle of life.
(0) comments
| |
| Tuesday, April 01, 2003 |
| Oh, yes. On my Oedipus as DareDevil schtick, Tom adds:
Meanwhile Orestes, having been banished by his mother for his own safety, is brought up in the wilderness by a lowly shepherd who teaches him ancient skills bestowed upon him by the gods. He returns to the family fold seemingly as he was before... but with the remarkable
ability to scale walls, create web-like structures, and with incredible senses similar to those of his spider. He is an Incredible Spider-Man, so to speak. He joins his sister, fighting both underworld and Underworld villains in their quest to avenge their father's death and kill their mother, the evil Clytemaestra. He's slighted and repressed.
She flips out a lot. They fight crime.
It's got legs, all right. Who gets to be the Hulk?
Well, Hercules? Or would that be too confusing?
Tom also takes time out to diss Oxford Romance, which is stoutly defended by Miss Kitschbitch.
The convalescent and bebestwished Miss K. points out that scanning through the freaks and geeks keeps on sane in the midst of the pre-finals brain drain.
She's got a point. We just had to chat up Americans on ytalk. She could browse throught the elegant and beautiful backdrops Oxford provides for mutant medics to try to get their freak on.
Nice church.
Nice jacket.
Nice cock, apparently. You lucky, lucky ladies.
(0) comments
| |
|
| Meanwhile, far from Operation What's Wrong, Don't You Speak Phraselator?, The MDC holds on to two seats in Harare.
I don't get it. Zanu-PF uses vote-rigging, ballot theft, violence, threats....how can they possibly lose these elections? Are they not trying?
This could lead to bloody reprisals and possibly a popular uprising, if the people of Zimbabwe are not too exhausted and hungry. Thank God the US is on the clock, protecting the citizens of rogue states from the depredations of their rulers. Shall they expect the marines on Thursday? Only the forces of terror are having a training day...
(0) comments
| |
| |
|
Venusberg.org finds Blogger very attractive...
|
|
|
elsewhere:
Interconnected
Plasticbag
Oh Skylab
Barcablog
Orbyn
moreover:
Brainsluice
Mo Morgan
Mothninja
Tajmahal
Wherever y'are
Prandial Post
thereafter:
Toby Kay
McCargow
Blogadoon
LinkMachineGo
Methylsalicylate
Hammersley
Joeblog
Grayblog
the Collective
Nick Jordan
Kooky Mojo
Betty Woo
Moth
Mr. Thomas G
the author:
danATvenusberg.org
and finally...
the archives
|
