I couldn't care less about Beijing, and I couldn't care less about 2012 either. But, in anticipation of the inevitable "scandals" of the next few weeks, can anyone please explain to me why the sporting authorities and the public at large are so down on the idea of performance-enhancing drugs? I've never seen a convincing argument to back up their ( Read more... )

Having finally returned to the albatross that I occasionally acknowledge still to be hanging around my neck, tonight I finally completed the second section of the eighth chapter of that ridiculous book of mine, which no one in their right mind would ever wish to read. I had barely touched this monstrosity since last Summer, for all manner of ( Read more... )

More spam, to begin with. I suppose it says a lot that my greatest entertainment these days is coming from spam emails ( Read more... )

I am becoming ever more amused by some of the spam emails I've been receiving lately, which present fake news headlines in hopes of inducing thick people to click on their links. Here is just a sample ( Read more... )

So I went along to the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday. The show itself wasn't great, but the ending was simply marvellous. Check out the inevitable, poor quality youtube footage (not mine). A girl near me was screaming, "You idiots! You've ruined it!"; while, outside, three cop cars and an ambulance roared up, sirens blaring; and even the folks on ( Read more... )

Given that I was only five years old when 'Teenage Kicks' came out, this, for me, will always be the greatest song ever written. (Let's just gloss over the fact that I was 23 and male when this first came out ( Read more... )

I am newly in love with the Xerox Girls, largely for this lyric: "you thought you looked like an industrial goth, well fuck off! Fuck off back to the Slimelight, with your stupid, ugly, lanky, streak-of-piss boyfriend, you poxy little cunt!" Yes, these actually were lyrics from a genuine song (as opposed to just some random rant). And it was 1997, ( Read more... )

I've suddenly been taken back, music-wise, to around 1997. Ooh, what a marvellous time for music that was! Sometimes, one can only fully appreciate such things in retrospect. Particularly when one wasn't actually a teenager at the time (or even living in the right country!). My latest playlist, dragged out of my woefully inadequate record ( Read more... )

This morning, the darling postie brought me my magical new USB floppy drive, and I proceeded to spend the day transferring data from my implausibly large collection of old 3.5" discs onto my new computer. And it went pretty well. There were only two discs that it couldn't manage to read at all. I do vaguely recognise them, but I haven't got a clue ( Read more... )

I think I left that particular sinking ship in the nick of time! I had occasion to turn on my old computer today, for the first time in a week and a half, and it worked fine for about ten minutes or so. Then it started to make a loud clanking sound and promptly died. And died for good, by the looks of things. When I tried to start it up again, it ( Read more... )