Iggy Pop & The Seven Dwarfs- in Glasgow!!!!!!

Well, as my 7 readers from Glasgow might be dimly aware, there's this big popular music festival being held in my home town of Glasgow (not, Auchenshuggle, as some of you may think!!!!!!!) this weekend, featuring "God of F@£%" Marilyn Manson (Who's been been up to his usual tricks by publicly trying to arrange a visit to the Uni of Glasgow's Anatomy Department to see their Collection of Dead People's Bits In Formadelhyde!!!!!!!!!!!) and cheeky rappy chappy Eminimenimenineinemineinimnieminem!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, this other boring little story (Main bit: Various Christian groups go "Oh no!!!! It's Marilyn Manson and Emineimeineimeinem!!!!!!!! We need to save our children!!!!!!") gives us some interesting info on the "riders" ie those lists of stuffs that primadonna popstars seem to need up "backstage"!!!!!!!!

Iggy Pop, the American musician, [Cripes!!!!!!! I thought he was Norwegian!!!! You learn something new every day!!!!!!] has made a request for seven dwarfs, while an unnamed performer has asked for a bald stripper with no teeth. [Sundays headlines: "US shock rocker in 'Granny Stripper' fury!!!!!!!!!!"] There has also been a request for 47 watermelons.

Kylie Minogue is not due to perform at the show, but her presence will still be felt after an undisclosed person demanded that a life-size cardboard cut-out of the diminutive Australian pop star should be displayed. [Handy enough if you want to cut it down with, say, chainsaw or something!!!!!!!]

However, at least one thoughtful musician at the festival has demonstrated some taste by asking for a Peter Howson print. [??!??!?!]

47 Melons?!?!??!?! I would have thought there would have been enough melons backstage, what with all those "groupies" and that baldy stripper!!!!!!!!!!!!

That lady's a cow- literally!!!! (Almost!!!!)

Have you ever had a walk in the country, looked across a field full of cows, and thought: "Hmmmm!!!!!!!! I wonder what would be the result if I were to given one of those bovine quadrupeds a good hard rogering?!?!?!??!"

Well, to be honest, I haven't!!!!! But if you have, the result, in addition to the myriad colonies of insectoid beasties on your "goolies" and the RSPCA price on your head, might be this thingie wot US boffins have acheived: a fertisilied cow egg with human DNA in it!!!!!! And they didn't even need to "get jiggy" with the cow to do it!!!!!!!! "Melding man and beast may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but it's not." said some bloke.

To Be Or Not To Be... Porno!!!!!

Hmmm...!!!!! Looks like some folks in the wonderful world of broadsheets have discovered a hot new "trend" in filmaking called... "Shakespeare Porno"!!!!!!!!!! In other words, blue movies... done in the style of Shakespeare!!!!!! Titles include "A Midsummer Night's Cream", and

Tromeo and Juliet (1996)- in which Tromeo masturbates to an interactive porn CD-rom called "As You Lick It" and Juliet calls 1-900-FUL-STAF for phone sex

There's even a prof taking an interest in it- one Richard Burt, a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Quite how this is different to the long list of "adult" "dramas" based on other genres (eg "Sex Trek", "Saturday Night Beaver", etc., etc., !!!!!!) is one question which the article somehow fails to answer!!!!!!! Maybe they haven't noticed it, because they're a bunch of stuck-up knobs- which would be strangely appropriate when you think of it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Books + Frogs = Sex Scandal?!?!?!

Well, as you folks might know, I do have a bit of respect for our friends over the channel!!!!!!!1 By which I of course mean the French, not ITV!!!!!!!!!! But now my respect for them is even higher!!!!!! Apparently they seem to have an annual scandal, like, every year!!!!!!!!!! And it's about books!!!!!!!!!! You know, the paper thingies, wot you read- with your eyes!!!!!!!!!

Apparently, this year's scandal is about some "sex tourism" novel set in Bangkok (Which is really appropriate, given that the name "Bangkok" has two double-entendres for the price of one!!!!!!! Not that residents of Bangkok have actually to pay for such a priveledge of course!!!!!!!!!) Anyway, the book is of the opinion that ladies from Thailand are jolly good in the bedroom department!!!!! And it slags of some tourism guide, and the boss of said book has got a bit hot under the collar!!!!!! Maybe he should make a mug of Horlicks and lie down or something!!!!!!

Volcano Eruption Buries Roman Porno!!!!!!

Apparently Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii and Herculaneum today in 79!!!!! (That's 79CE, not bloody 1979, Kate Thorton!!!!!!!!) Amongst stuff that was buried were a lot of "naughty" images!!!!!! Which must have caused a bit of a ruffle in the midships of the Victorians who discovered them!!!!!!!!!!

Strangley pro-censorship quote from Jefferson!!!!!!

No governmnent ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will. - Thomas Jefferson [OK then, so is a free press good or bad, then!??!?! Answer that one if can!!!!! Woops, sorry I forgot- you can't!!!!!!!! Because you're dead!!!!!!! Harumph!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

Sequel to Trainspotting: Porno!!!!!!!

Well, if you like books filled with junkie Scots taking lots of drugs 'n' booze 'n' sex, and having a "square go" with each other, written in an prose style slightly less penetrable than their accents, then you're in luck!!!!!!!! The doyen of Jerry Springer meets William McIllvaney, Irvine Welsh is doing a sequel to Trainspotting, called Porno!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And of course the Guardian is rolling over and going "diddums" at the mere prospect!!!!!!!!!

Actually, Welsh is doing his darndest to update his portrayal of the just-outside-Edinburgh "town" where it's set, Leith, (It's so "just-outside" that you could walk down a road in built-up area of Edinburgh and suddenly, without any warning, you're in Leith!!!!!!!!!!) because it's starting to get a bit yuppified!!!!!!!!!! "There's bits from London, Amsterdam, San Francisco and the south of France as well, but it's mainly Leith, which is more interesting anyway," Which is just as well, because the portrayal of Leith in that movie was complete and utter shit!!!!!!!!!! For the record, I actually lived in Leith for nearly a year, and only got mugged by junkies once!! And they weren't wearing any cool clothes!!! And there wasn't any sleazy 70s Glam-rock playing in the background, either!! As I said to the doctor who did my stitches, that director Danny Boyle has a lot to answer for!!!!

Tho, not all Scottish writers are pleased!!!!!! One Ronald Frame attacked the "cliched brand of novels celebrating such dark subjects as cannibalism, necrophilia and sado-masochism"!!!!!!!!!! And Kenneth White attacked certain unnamed novelists, comparing their "grittier-than-thou realism" to the "remains of last night's fish supper, sauced up with sordid naturalism"!!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, they might have a point!!!!!!!!! How come Chris Morris gets toasted by the sections of the media for his recent show, but Welsh gets celebrated (usually by the same people!!!!) for his "lets-have-a-laff-about-working-class-schemies-having-drugs-and-sex" novels?!?!?!?! Actually, I think I know the answer to that one- they're a bunch of snobby middle-class idiots!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today's contradictory quote!!!!!!!!

Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being -Paul Tillich [Er, hang on!!!! If you're avoiding "being" then you're "non-being" anyway!!!!! I think I might have spotted amassive contradiction there!!!!! Wot!??! You were being sarcastic!??!? Oh!!!!!!!!]

London one-way system: it's really old!!!!!

Apparently the world's first one-way street was started in London in 1617!!!!!! If that's how old their system is, no wonder it caused so many traffic jams!!!!!!!!!!

SC to ISP: "Coochie-coochie Coo!!!!!!!"!!!!

Would you ever entrust the technical gubbins wot runs your cool webpub to a toddler?!?!?! We would- and we have!!!!!!!!!!!

So, it's time for supercalifgragilisticexpialidocious 2nd Birthday Greets to the lovely people who host SC!!!!!!!!!!! By which we of course mean Blogger!!!! (Oh, and Freeserve are jolly nice too for hosting our old pages as well...)

Conservative Catfight 3: Return of the Grey Man!!!!!!!!

Well, after Thatch's backing of Iain Duncan-Smith yesterday, it wasn't too much of a surprise when today his Tory leadership nemesis Kenneth Clarke got plaudits from his old boss and ex-PM, John Major, who then goes on to slag off Thatcher, whom he happened to replace as PM!!!!!!!!! No doubt, this has nothing to do with IDS being one of a group of "rebel" MPs who kept annoying "Mr Grey" during his tenure as PM- to the point that he was inadvertedly recorded as referring to them, and one or two of his ministers, as "bastards"!!!!!!!!!!!

Wot's more surprising is that old bastion of Old Conservative "Bash Johnny Foreigner" culture, "quality" tabloid the Daily Mail has backed Mr Pro-Euro Clarke!!!!! Displaying a surprising pragmatism for a paper which is usually more at home complaining about How Things Were Better When Britain Had An Empire, the Mail today says:

This paper has great faith in the common sense of Tory members and their desire to see their party survive, which is why we endorse Kenneth Clarke.

So, whinging about "tradition" and "principles" is one thing, but backing the more electorally popular candidate, so that the Conservative party doesn't go down the plughole and they lose their entire readership is obviously a bit more of a pressing matter for the Mail!!!!!!!

But the behaviour of some non-Tory-supporting papers are even more interesting!!!!! Particularly vaguely (In more ways than one!!!!!!!) "New Labour" friendly broadsheet The Guardian, which devotes a portion of it's front page to linking Clarke with tobacco smuggling by his old employers in British American Tobacco (BAT)!!!!!!

BAT not merely colluded with smugglers in the past, but is centrally organising the process and collecting hundreds of millions of pounds worth of black market proceeds

Or, as the Beeb news said:

Mr Clarke has also been hit after claims of tobacco smuggling by British American Tobacco, of which he is a non-executive deputy chairman.

Hmmm....!!!!! If someone were to actually hit podgy old Clarke, he would lose his fist amongst multiple layers of fatty flesh!!!!!!!!!! I think somehow this is an unlikely situation!!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile, The Independent, as they keep banging on at every opportunity, have Clarke as a director of their newspaper, which can surely have nothing to do with this rather interesting column in todays issue, which basically calls supporters of IDS idiots!!!!!!!!!

Several party members have declared on the airwaves in recent days: "People dismissed Maggie when she first became leader. It is the same with Ian. He will be like Maggie." They said the same with Hague. "Maggie was unpopular in the polls when she first became leader, and look what happened. William will be like Maggie."

William is about to depart, having led his party to a massive defeat. [...]

Well, for all you non-UK folks, you can now find out what all this storm in a teacup is all about- there's a live TV debate on tonight at 2230BST (UK time!!!!) on BBC2's Newsnight proggy!!!! (Apparently it's "The programme that asks the awkward questions"!!!!!!!!!! Wot, like: "Minister.... Whjkfhg dsgjhds gjkhsdgjkdhg dshjgjsdgh?!?!??! Answer the question, please!!!!!!!!!!!!"?!?!??!?!)

Chaos- in your cranium!!!!!!

In any case!!!!!! Apparently, a little bit of randomness is not a bad thing!!!! In fact, according to one or two top boffins, a little bit of chaos in the brainbox department is quite normal!!!!!!!!!! "Quantitatively, such behavior is associated with a positive Lyapunov exponent, a hallmark of chaos" said some bloke.

Mind you, if they really wish to see some serious Lyapunov exponent action, then maybe they should stick their electrodes into Margaret Thatchers bonce!!!! Perhaps she might finally become of some use to Humankind!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you like videogames- you're brain-damaged!!!!!!

Well, this might not be of so much surprise to those who think that many games designers are themselves not exactly too full up in the intellectual department!!!!!!!! Apparently, some boffins have tested the braincells of kids play one game on an N64, and come to the surprising conclusion that it doesn't really stimulate the frontal lobe of one's mind in the same way as reading a book!!!!!!!

Well, so bloody wot, you might bawl!!!!! But apparently this is the beginning of the apocalypse according to the boffins behind this study!!!!!!!! U C, the frontal lobe is the gubbins wot does "play a crucial role in controlling behavior and in developing memory, emotion and learning"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"There is a problem we will have with a new generation of children- who play computer games--that we have never seen before," he said. "The implications are very serious for an increasingly violent society, and these students will be doing more and more bad things if they are playing games and not doing other things like reading aloud or learning arithmetic."

Er, well, the implications might be very serious for "an increasingly violent society", except that statistics show that we don't really live in one!!!!!!! And, anyway, I don't need scientfic research to tell me that anyone who plays videogames all the time is a socially maladjusted moron!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also, given that the kids were only playing a single game on a discontinued console system, couldn't it be possible that the lack of frontal lobe antics might have something to do with the kids being extremely bored?!??!?! In which case, maybe for the sake of future society, we should ban "Crossroads"?!?!?!??! (That would certainly get my vote, I can tell you!!!!!!!!!!)

Anyway, if you think the above quote was a bit over-the-top, "sober" UK broadsheet The Observer comes on all "News Of The World" with the same story!!!!!!!!!

COMPUTER GAMES STUNT TEEN BRAINS

Hi-tech maps of the mind show that computer games are damaging brain development and could lead to children being unable to control violent behaviour.

Blimey!!!! So if crappy videogames are "damaging brain development", how do we explain what's happened to the folks in The Observer?!?!?!??!

Still, probably the best comment on the subject was

They'll just grow up to be shitty gamereviewers who can't write. just like today's video game reviewers.

Dead actor says: I'm a childish masochistic exhibitionist!!!!

"Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult." - Laurence Oliver [Crikey!!!! Wot next?!?!?! Anthea Turner saying: "Presenting telly is really easy- if you're a complete moron!!!!!!!!!!"!??!?!?!?]

Conservative Catfight 2: Return of the old duffer!!!!!

Mind you, Toole might have a point!!!!!!!!!!! Never mind what she's like now, just take a look at flipping archive footage of Margaret Thatcher when she was PM!!!!! It was like the voters had entrusted the running of the UK to Dot Cotton from Eastenders!!!!!!!!! Luckily, at some point near the end of the 80s, the general public came to their senses, and her popularity plummeted!!!! At which point, the Tories quickly replaced her as leader before the lost the election (Or, at least, they put off massive election defeat for another 5 years!!!!!!!!!) Now she occupies the strange position of being God to Conservative activists whilst being an laughable lumbering old dinosaur and election liability to everyone else!!!!!!!!!

So you would have thought that any Tory "high heid yin" looking for electoral recovery after a second massive election defeat would try and keep her out of the way!!!!! But you'd be wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!! In fact, she's just sunk their chances of recovering at the next election by writing a letter to the Daily Telegraph supporting the front-runner candidate Iain Duncan-Smith!!!!!!!! Hey Presto- tonz of news coverage, Tory activists jump over themselves to vote for The Anointed One, and the general public piss themselves laughing for the next 4 years!!!!!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile, the march of campaigning newspaper columnists continues!!!!!!!! The Scotsman's Bill Jamieson takes a rare break from his weekly paranoid "Europe=Satan!!!!!!" type columns to er, do a paranoid semi-"Europe=Satan!!!!!!" type column trashing Ken Clarke becuase he doesn't think "Europe=Satan!!!!!!"!!!!!!!!!!!!! (NB It even includes a contact address for a paranoid "Europe=Satan!!!!!!"-type pamphlet!!!!!)

Tool(e) to World Leaders: Are you a bunch of loonies?!??!?!

Let me warn you, dear readers, that age does not necessarily lead to wisdom!!!!! In fact, it's often quite the opposite!!!! It takes a lot of hard work to maintain one's level of intelligence at a later stage in life, and you'll no doubt be glad to learn that I am up to handling the responsibilities of being an elder spokesperson of my generation!!!!! (Which is not "Generation X" as you may think!!!!!!!!!!!! In fact, it's probably more like "Generation F"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

So, if I were to, say, become an international world leader, then I think I could cope with this wizard wheeze!!!! A neuroscientest (Which means he's a brain surgeon, not a technition for "The Matrix" as you may think!!!!!!!!!!!) with the wonderful name of Dr James Toole is suggesting that world leaders get a regular check in case they go do-lally, and stick pencils up their nose, and a pair of underpants on their head!!!!!!!

It'll be interesting to see the Whitehouse's reaction to this proposal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Could Be Talking About A Certain Leadership Contest" type quote!!!!!

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. -JK Galbraith. [The only prob for the Tories is which one's which?!?!?!?!?]

Wind up the media- with a "wind-up the media" parody!!!!!!!! (And then tell them about it beforehand in case they're not wound up enough!!!!!)

Well, if "Mr Moral" IDS does get elected, it might be AOK if you want to get him morally PO'd PDQ!!!! So it could be a great 4 years for certain "satire" type folks who might want to knee him in his morals!!!!! And talking of which, no doubt even people on the furthest reaches of this great big onion (by which I mean of course, the Earth, not a literal great big onion!!!!!!!! That would be really nuts!!!!!!!!!!) must know about the media stink caused in reaction to Chris Morris' "Brass Eye" satire/edgy/alternative television show!!!! Indeed you're probably sick of hearing people saying "Oh isn't it funny that Mr Morris has provoked exactly the sort of media craptalk session that his show satirised!!!!!!"!!!!!!

Well, it might actually be funnier than that!!!! According to this little seen entry in the Scotsman Media Diary a few weeks before the broadcast, (Scroll down to the headline "OK Chris, you got us") when the Daily Mail got enough information about the show in order to make "Recommended TV Show Of The Day" on Thursday, and "The Sickest TV Show Ever?" on Friday, that they might got their information indirectly from a rather unusual source: Chris Morris himself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (!!!!!!!!!)

Conservative Catfight!!!!!

Talking of which!!!!!!!! The former El Prez De La UK Tories has given his backing to Iain Duncan-Smith in the Conservative leadership battle, which to be honest is a little bit like Richard Madely paying tribute to the talents of Roland Rat!!!!!!!! Just in case he wins, and you're all worried about the bother of having to say "Conservative Leader Iain Duncan-Smith" all the time, don't worry- he's got a "Nice" nickname: IDS!!!!!!!!! Given that he appears to be ahead in the race at the mo, it looks like Her Majesty's Official Opposition will be lead by someone who sounds more like one of those treatments one gets at hospital for a rare tropical disease!!!!!!!!! The other choice is an old fat bloke (Kenneth Clarke- or "Ken" Clarke as he seems to be called now!!!!) who knows how to run the economy, but is disliked by most MPs in his own party!!!!! There was a third one by the name of Portillo, but he got voted out by the MPs for being too namby-pamby!!!! And now his supporters are even going on about the Tories getting even less popular than the Liberal-Democrats, led by "Cheeky Chappy" Charlie Kennedy!!!!!! (Not that some people think this a bad thing!!!!!!!)

All in all, it looks like the former "natural party of government" (Wot!??!?! Like, by genetics!??!?!) seems as cracked up as it's former female PM!!!!!!!! Mind you, it's not all laughs- there are also some really funny bits!!!!!!!!!!! Especially as some of the Conservative minded newspaper columnists start breaking ranks and pitch in for a particular candidate and trash the other one whilst trying to remain "objective" and deploring "backbiting"!!!!!!! Today's little beauty is from one Bruce Anderson, who claims to have been once a "deluded Marxist revolutionary", and is now presumably a deluded Conservative instead!!!! Well, at least if his bizzare but hilarious predictions about the Tories giving Labour a close-run race at the last election, and it's aftermath are anything to go by!!!!!!!! Anyway, he's telling whatever Conservative party members read his columns to go for IDS, after spending an entire article trashing Ken Clarke!!!!!!! (Not bad, considering who he originally supported...)

Mind you, it's not just the Tories!!! One fat-lipped former Labour heavyweight (Literally- almost!!!!) is getting a bit merry about various policy think-tanks that seem to be surprising the Labour govt by completely disagreeing with them!!!!!!

MP3 is dead- says clueless "tech" "reporter"!!!!!!!!

Crikey!!!!! Apparently MP3 is dead!!!!! It must be, because Napster is dead!!!!! At least, so says this hilariously badly written article, which seems to think Gnutella is somehow MP3-free, and that lovely little services like this, this and even legit stuff like this don't exist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apparently while we've all been listening to our spangly "O-Town vs Anal C@%t vs DJ Blobhead Going Mental In A Sample Editor 'Tuff UK Garage' Mix" mp3s, there's actually been a battle in the corporate world between Microsofts WMA format and Realaudio's erm, Realaudio format for subscription audio listening stuffs!!!!! They also make some strange mention of people not being too keen on paying for music they've already bought!!!!!!!

Erm...!!!! I can see some problems with this "business model" straight away!!!!!!!!! That's even before the vaguely interesting mention of antitrust "inquiries" against the services!!!!!!!!

Hmmm... Maybe the record companies really need all those miscreants trading MP3s after all!!!! To show that they still have competition!!!!! And you can bet that our reporter Mr Haig will be saying at said juncture: "You might have thought MP3s died with Napster- but you were wrong!!!!!!!!" Speak for yourself, Haig!!! You're about as "with it" as your former Conservative leader namesake!!!!!!!!!! Ahem, where was I?!?!?!?

These pages are bugged- literally!!!!!!!! (Almost!!!!)

Well, of course, w3pagez with bugz are not exactly amongst the most unexpected of problems encountered by the average w3surfa!!!!! In fact, it's extremely common for one to go to a page and have some alert flashing "Javascript Fatal Error XXVVXVII in line 4321563456" just because some prannet doesn't know how to set up their jazzy "mouseover" script!!!!!!!!! (And I bet the mice are pretty cross too, at having to hang around the website whilst the script is getting "debugged"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) But here's one "bug" that's not obviously apparent- because it's 1x1 pixels in size!!!!!!!!!

Yes, this is apparently called a "bug"- or a tracking 1x1 invisible .gif file which can send and receive cookies for the usual "consumer profiling" so beloved by the idiot ad banner mob!!!!!!! Hang on a mo, isn't this extremely (as in 2 or 3 years) old news?!?!?!? I mean, ad banners and "web trackers" have been doing the same thing for yonks!!!! Why is it important now it's 1 pixel in size!?!??!! Because it's less easy to see?!?!?! Well, it's not as though you can't get webpages to track visitors without any graphics whatsoever- any big company can simply get their pages to track users at the server side level!!!!!!!

And hasn't the word "bug" already been used anyway?!?!?! Sounds like this version of "bug" was coined by some technophobic sub-editor who, when he books a flight online then catches a cold after the flight, wants to do a new front-page investigation on the problem of "viruses"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trust the Dutch to put a "dam" in it!!!! (Doh!!!!)

Maybe the unfortunate fellow in the story above should have emigrated to Holland before calling the newspaper!!!!!! Because a humungous hacker festival has happened there!!!!!!!!!!!! Apparently there was a lot of talk about "laptop" and "wireless" hacking. Arg!!!! Does that mean that they can now hack my wireless, and make it tune itself to Radio Luxembourg!??!?!?! And how on Earth will they hack into the top of my lap!??!?!?!? Sounds a tad painful if you ask me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Troubleshoot a NetWeb Gremloid- and get shafted by spooks!!!!!!!!!!

Honestly!!!! I often wonder if the real reason our US-ian cousins are so "Big" on this Freedom of Speach malarky is that it makes it easier to shoot the messenger!!!!!!!!!!

Take this example!!!!!!!!! Some techie dude in an InterNetWeb SuperProvider noticed that a local newspaper w3sitey, run by a rival ISP, could be edited using Frontpage on a normal home PC compute- even if it was connected to tha SupeyDupey Inphoway Hi-Pipe with a really old (28.8K!!!!!!!) modem transceiver with one of those "acoustic couplings" with big suckers you stuck your 1970s phone handset into!!!!!!!!! (As opposed to other "couplings" where you stick something rather different in!!!!!!! But that's completely irrelevant to this story!!!!)

So, he kindly informed the newspaper of the whopping great big hole in their editorial quality control, netweb-wise!!!!!! Then he gets arrested by the FBI for some reason!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As usual, it's starting the usual paranoid "guns/freedom" type debate in some circles!!!!!!!! But I can tell you this, FBI peeps!!!!!! Next time I'm in the US, and I spot some dire security bug in the FBI's server which allows the FBI site to be edited via SpanglyW3Editor v0.2342242b on tha desktop, don't worry, I won't inform you lot- in order to save FBI time and resources!!!!!! You'll be needing that to track down all those hacker types re-editing the pages to "FBI suckxzkzz!!!!!111", won't you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, then- Planet of the Apes was crap after all!!!!!!!!!

U-no, I used to think that the reason that all those crap "blockbuster" movies (The sort that makes one wish to "bust" the "blocks" of the cretins who "greenlighted" it!!!! Or, alternatively, tie the miscreants to a train line, and "greenlight" a twenty squillion pound project to build a really spangly choo-choo train to travel in their vague direction!!!!!!!!! Woops were was I?!?!?!?!?!) Anyway, I always thought the reason that these movies always had posters with newspaper review quotes like

BRILLIANT!!! FAB!!! -The Sun

THE BEST MOVIE OF THE TRILLENIUM!!! -The Mirror

BETTER THAN 'DAD'S ARMY'!!!!! -The Mail

IT WAS SO BRILLIANT, MY HEAD EXPLODED!!!!!!! -The Star

was because the people in the aforementioned newspapers are complete and utter buffoons!!!!

But I was wrong!!!!!!!!! It turns out that the real reason is that they didn't watch the movie well enough and wrote a review ultra-quicko!!!!!!!! At least, that's this guy's excuse!!!!!! He also claims to have been overawed by the special effects to the extent that he didn't notice how boring the story was!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I never!!!!!!!!! It seems even film critics are human!!!!!!!!!!! What exciting times we live in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW If you want a whole range of movie reviews, from the twerps to the brainyboxes, go here!!!!!!!!

Non-Blogger Blogger- from Blogger!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, you might have thought they were completely dead!!!! Deader than a dead mans dead bits, including his dead mans handle!!!!!!!!!! In fact, you might have thought they were deader than me!!!!!!!! Only of course, I'm not dead, and neither is Blogger!!!!! In fact, there's some interesting new stuffs from Blogger which might be the next "paradigm shift" for the superinphopipeway netwebby!!!!! Which either means it's the next "Netscape" type thing, or the next "Pointcast"!!!!!!!!!! And it's all to do with the fact that I'm not actually posting this to Blogger!!!!!!!!!! Confused?!?!??! I certainly was!!!!!!!!!!!

But this page marginally helps!!!!!!!!!! There's some spiffy XML "protocol" thingy called XML-RPC that allows one to run a proggy on a NetWeb superserver by sending a little text file containg an XML command-line thingy!!!!!! If everything's fine in the XML command, it'll run the command, and give you back an XML message saying hello!!!!!!!! If it's not OK tho, it'll still send you an XML message back- telling you to go forth and multiply!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So bloody wot, I hear you roar!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, Blogger, the previously-really-"happening"-but-now-a-one-man-operation-automatic-netweb-online-webpub-website has made some of their website work on this new-fangled XML-RPC wheeze, and released the spec to all peeps!!!!!!!! Already there's tonz of little progs which can post to Blogland without going through tha w3sitey!!!!!!!!!!! And here's one, wot I used to post, like, this story!!!!

Amazing, huh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it's also getting a "this is a new paradigm shift!!!" type histrionics from Dave Winer, who, by a spectacular coincidence, is pretty big on XML-RPC!!!!!!!!!!! According to him, it's right up there with "Quark XPress, FileMaker, PageMaker, Eudora, Netscape, MSIE, StuffIt, and all kinds of other scriptable apps."!!!!!!!!!!

George Bernard-Shaw says: how to despair- be hopeful!!!!!!!!!!!!

He who has never hoped can never despair -George Bernard-Shaw [Unless of course he has had the misfortune to watch "Big Brother 2"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

Back from the grave!!!!!!!

As I type this doggerel, one of the big superserver computes next to me is making a very strange noise through one of it's Pentium [Insert spangly "Intel Inside" jingle here, Mr Ad-man!!!!] fans!!!!!! It's going all squeaky and gurgling, and every so often it stops to make a WHUMP!!!!!!!-type noise like a "muckle" big "broadsword"!!!!!!!! (Not to be confused with my own "muckle" big "broadsword" of course!!!!!!!!!!!) It's sounds just like Madame Guillotine going to the dentists!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope it doesn't need an orthodontist before I can send this message!!!!!!!!!!!

Wot do you mean "Where the four fruit marmalade were you, you silly old duffer?!?!?!? I thought you were a corpse or something!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"?!?!?!?!? Well, strangely enough, I was!!!!!!!! But now, I'm back!!!!!!!!!! Only, having come back from certain death, I shall have to take a it a little easier!!! So in fact, I shall only post when I bloody well feel like it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Quality, not quantity, that's my motto!!!! At least, that's what those party to my antics in the bedroom department might say!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Evolution: dead?!??!?!?!

Honestly!!!!! You wonder why all those wacky religious types in the US keep missing the flipping point!!!!! There all this business of them trying to question the teaching of evolution, (As opposed to the entirely scientifically credible scenario of a supernatural entity going "Hey Presto!!!!", and, blammo, there's the universe, or something like that!!!!!!!) when evolution might in fact be dead!!!!!!!

At least, for humans anyway!!!!!! In this spiffy article, it's argued that physically humans have hardly evolved from 50,000 years ago!!!!!!!!! Mind you, it also mentions that some people argue that in terms of brainpower and culture, we're actually evolving at Warp 9!!!!!!!!!!! (Hmmm... That's sounds a little familiar, doesn't it?!??!?!)

No doubt in future, when we'll all be communicating in "XML" through our "PDAs" about the latest data "packets", some idiots will be going around trying to ban the Sinclair ZX81 because it's "un-Godly"!!!!!! But, hey, that's evolution for you!!!!!!!

"A pint of Olaf Tit-bit, please!!!!!!!!"

Apparently some beer called Skullsplitter has won some sort of award!!!!!!!! Wot's more, the name comes from a number of similarly bizzarely named Vikings who in tha olden days maurauded the Orkneys where this beer is made!!!!!!!!!!!

Nowadays, our names tell people nothing. Tony Blair. William Hague. Not like Magnus Bare-legs, Einar Belly-Shaker, Arni-Pinleg, Botof the Stubborn, Halfdan Longleg, Olaf Tit-bit, Sigurd the Fake-Deacon, and all the other crazed characters who limp or slaughter their way through the Orkney sagas.

After this award, I can't wait for the flood of similarly Viking inspired beer names!!!!!! "Bellyshaker" sounds like a good one already!!!!!! Mind you, I dunno if a beer called "Fake Deacon" would be that successful!!!!!!!

Mark Knopfler is a dinosaur- literally!!!!!

Compared to the sorry state of the above gramophones, my purchase of Dire Straits' platter "Brothers In Arms" begins to look a little more palatable!!!!! So it's a jolly odd coincidence to read the following story today... Apparently archaeologists have found out what we all knew for ages: Mark Knopfler, the headband wearing frontman of Dire Straits, is a dinosaur!!!!!! To be exact he's called masiakasaurus knopfleri, and is "about 6ft long with peculiar teeth and jaws"!!!!!!!!

Yes, you guessed it!!!! Some archaelogists found a new dinosaur whilst playing a lot of Dire Straits on their CD-o-gram, and thought it would be a bit of a laff to name it after the venerable widdly guitar maestro!!!!!!

Wow!!!! Wot bunch of wacky cards they must be in Archaeology-land!!!!!!!!

The Worst Records in the World- ever!!!!!

OK, there's not actually not much to write about today, so here's a rant about the worst ever records wot I have purchased- like, with my own money!!!!!

• "The Enraged Will Inherit The Earth" by McCarthy!!!!!! My second flipping indie purchase, and it was just so dire!!!! The worst late 80s indie musical cliches one can imagine, (jangly guitars, cheap organs, jumpy drums, crap cello+violin on the "thoughtful" songs!!!!) plus hilariously badly written right-on Socialist Worker style cliches!!!!

• "Manhattan Shuffle" by Landscape!!!! "Wot, like the 'Einstien a Go Go' people?!??!?" I hear you peeps roar!!!!!! Erm, I'm not entirely sure!!!! If they were, they had by this album somehow mutated into some horrible "poppy" early 80s proto-"boy band" with 80s squiggly keyboard sounds, out-of-tune vocals, sub-pub band "tunes", and a "recorded in me shed in a couple of hours!!!!" style production!!!!!

• Some dreadful "progressive" house record I've never actually bothered to listen to all the way through, and whose name I have (purposefully) forgotten!!!!!! I must admit, I was fooled by this one when I saw this lying in a pile of bargain bin singles in a charity shop!!!! I think it was the "elevate your mind" and "higher plane" type title on the front that led me to think this might be some lost rave anthem!!!! I put it on and was assailed by the type of rubbish that in 1993 made "cheesy hardcore" seem an infinitely better proposition!!!! You know the drill- some inept "progressive" attempt to recapture the glory days of Chicago deep house: loads of piano stabs, terribly weedy string synths (usually doing some sort of high-note "hit" on the bar at the chorus, in the style of Soul II Souls' "Back to Life") and about 3 backing singers attempting a "gospel" style "choir"!!!

  Then the verse begins and the most insipid and melismatic voice ever starts intoning: "Mmmmm..Ahahahaarrggh... Peee-pulllll!!!!! Weee Gotta It Togeh-tha!!! Becaauusse the worrrllld..." (etc. Go on about how bad the world is for the entire flipping verse!!! Now it's time for the chorus...) "Sooo wee gotta get it togethaa-aa-aah!!!! Move yo-ourrr miinnd to a hhiiiggghhheer plaaa-haaiinnn-nn!!!!!!" At which point, I ripped the needle off the record, and put the single back in my collection, right at the top, as a permanent reminder to not be such a plank next time!!!!! (Still, I got U96's ace sicko Belgian hardcore tune "I Wanna Be A Kennedy!" at the same time, so it wasn't all bad!!!!)

A really boring day in history!!!!!!!

Nothing really happened today in history, apparently!!!!!! The only major thing was some bloke called Felix Mendelssohn did some Wedding March chune for Queen Victoria's daughter's wedding in 1858!!!!!!!! Rivetting, huh!!!!!!!

Thursday's slightly "rumpy-pumpy" obsessed cheesee quotee!!!!!

Two's company. Three's the result. [Eh?!?!? Wot if it's two inanimate objects!??!?!? Unless they have Trekky type "replicator" technologoy, I see this scenario as somehow a little unlikely!!!!!! Oh, wait a sec, you're talking about two folks... erm, OK, then!!!!! No, wait, hang on a mo!!!! Wot about if it's two blokes?!?!?!? Or an impotent bloke?!?!??!? Or a sterile woman?!?!??!?! You haven't exactly thought this one out, have you, sonny boy!!!!!!!!]

Rave- like a Scientologist!!!!!

This is a bit strange!!!!! Apparently some group connected to the Church of Scientology have gone and ripped off wads of content from some ravey w3site!!!!!!!!!!

Dunno why tho!!!!! Mind you, Scientologists use that "E-Meter" thing, so they possibly could have got a bit confused with ravey culture at some juncture!!!!!! In which case, I woudln't be surprised if John Travolta's working on "Battlefield Earth II", in which Johnny MulletBoy saves the Earth yet again from nasty aliens- by getting a whole load of people into a field and playing loads of "tuff" UK Garage on a "kickin'" sound system!!!!!!!!!!

Like a Virgin- taking it up tha Chocolate Starfish!!!!!!!

Crikey!!!! According to this "analysis" article thingy, there are a lot of strange messed-up young folk in tha US regarding attitudes to rumpy-pumpy!!!!!!! Apparently some blokes think that the virginity of a ladyfriend can be preserved despite rumpy-pumpy, as long as Tommy Todger takes a drive up Chocolate Lane!!!!!! Similarly some young womenfolk think that playing the Lollipop Game isn't exactly having it off either!!!!!!! There's even some more mature folk, whom one would think would know a little better, who further muddy the waters with the concept of a "technical virgin"!!!!!! (Wot, like someone who's new to the wonderful world of computing or suchlike?!??!?! Look you silly dolts!!!!! You've either had it "off" or not!!!!!!! "Technical Virgins"!??!?!?! It's a bit like calling you lot "technical buffoons"!!!!!!!!)

No flipping wonder Bill Clinton said he didn't have "sexual relations" with that Monica Lewinsky!!!! According to the logic displayed above, her playing his One String Bass wasn't exactly doing "it", was it?!?!??!?!

Hello- it's tha Hedghogs!!!!!

U-no, the other day, I went down the old Oxfam shop, and picked up a copy of Not The Nine O'Clock News's spiffy comedy album "Hedgehog Sandwich"!!!!!!!!!! And it made me think: "Why are there no resources on the NetWeb regarding our spiky nocturnal friends??!??" (By which I of course mean hedgehogs, not those young whippersnapper "neds" who hang around the bustop between 7pm and 2am, and whinily brag on in their distinctive nasal twang about how much they were out of their "box" on various substances "the other night" at "Shug's place"!!!!!!!!! Woops, where was I?!?!?!?)

Anyway- I was wrong!!!!! There are hedgehog resources on tha w3!!!!!!! Check out this Usenet Hedgehog FAQ!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It features such diverse subjects as "Hedgehogs as pets" and "Advanced Topics in Hedgehoggery"!!!!! (Which, actually, when I think on it, sounds a little rude!!!!!!)

In short, you could call it "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Hedgehogs But Were Afraid To Ask In case You Felt A Bit Of A Prick!!!!!!!" (Doh!!!!!!!!!)

SMS = SOS- for tin-pot dictators!!!!!!!!

I bet when you get crap text messages on your mobile telephone like "Hlo will B l8 CU l8r!" type stuffs, you never think: "Hmmmm, I wonder if this message has the potential to topple a ruthless dictator halfway around the world?!?!?"!!!!!!!!!! Well, to be honest, I have!!!!!!! But unfortunately I don't know the mobile phone numbers of any ruthless dictators!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway- here's some enterprising young folk have done just that!!!!!!!!!!!!

It does beg a question tho- if the old revolutionary Soviet flag was a hammer and sickle, will in future we have similarly revolution-themed flags depicting a mobile phone and a tommy gun!!?!??!?!?

Pop down to the Video shop- on tha NetWeb!!!!!!!

Well, OK, this isn't really too much of "Tommorow's World" type thing- I mean you can already order videos on tha w3 already!!!!!!! But one of the first "proper" mmovie studios is now trying to do it with a "rental" system whereby one downloads a film onto one's compute!!!!!!!

So it's like those wacky pirate folk who trade "hooky" movies over tha w3!!!!! Except:

• It costs money!!!!!
• You can only play it for 24 hours before it deletes itself!!!!!!
• The films are usually about half an hour long!!!!!!

In fact, the only similarities are that you spend a long time on tha NetWeb and need wads of megabytes of HD space!!!!!! So I was basically talking crap, really!!!!!!

Anyway, it sounds like this wheeze will do really well, doesn't it?!?!??!?!?!? As long the licensing agreement don't ban you from speaking aloud about the movie to your friends- if you have any!!!!!!!!!

Bush- into tha Country!!!!!!

There seem to an awful lot of "analysis" pieces about the newly appointed El Prez de la US these days!!!!!!!! Consequently there's a bit of competition to see who can come up with the most original observation!!!!!!! So you start seeing levels of wackiness like the one reached in this article!!!!!!!!

The new suit'n'booted President and Nashville are a perfect match. In fact, some of Little George's best-known words and thoughts from the electoral campaign could easily be put to sweeping, pedal-steel accompaniment and turned into country songs: "Don't Misunderestimate Me", "America is Where Our Wings Take Dream" and - surely a country classic in the making - "If You Don't Stand For Anything, You Don't Stand For Anything".

!!!!!!!!

_ot a bunch of _acky _ags!!!!!!!!

_ot do you mean "_hat's going on here you very strange man!??!?"!??!?! _ell, I'm emulating ho_ people in the _hitehouse must be _riting their memos today!!!!!! That's because some really really _acky souls from the outgoing presidency decided to remove all the "_" keys from type_riters before the ne_ prez George _ Bush and his cre_ came in!!!!!! Strangely enough the type_riters haven't been fiddled about _ith in one area of the _hitehouse... The _est _ing!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ripping off the Record!!!!!

Why haven't I heard of this brillibobs site before?!??!?!? It looks like I'm not the only one that's amazed at the (admittedly waning) popularity of Scotlands most popular newpaper, the Daily Record!!!!!! The bloody thing's like an embodiment of the Scottish Cringe in crap tabloid form!!!!!!!!! I certainly would not waste 30p on it, so I'm amazed that slightly less than half a million (and counting...) Scots would do as well!!!!!!!!

Ahem, anyway!!!! Someone has been whiling away his time doing a jolly good Scottish satire mag- cunningly disguised as a (horribly accurate) parody of the Daily Record!!!!!!!!

In the continuing effort to make the First Minister smile, Henry Mcleish was asked yesterday why the chicken crossed the road.

Big Hen insisted that the chicken had in fact hit the ground running and contingency plans were being drawn up in order for it to make a robust contribution to the prosperity of the nation.

See?!?! So, check out the Daily Reckless. Defiantely a better bet than Scotland The Raw anyway!!!!!

The new Manic Street Preachers: Limp Bizkit!!!!!!!

Well, as our UK readers (all 23 of them!!!!!) know, shouty metal beat combo Limp Bizkit are currently nestling at the top spot in our Popular Music charts with their latest gramophone "Rollin'"!!!!!!!!! And already there's a number of young fans writing into TV letters pages about the event!!!!!! And they're mostly not very complimentary!!!!!! In fact, they tend to go along the lines of:

Limp Bizkit have sold out!!!! Their records are now bought by trendy people!!!! Their No. 1 hit proves how they have they turned into a shallow commercialised manufactured pap group catering to mindless robotic vegetable teenybopper sheep who just buy records to fit in rather than listen to real music played with real instruments, and with really meaningful lyrics!!!!! Enjoy your sucess, Judas Durst!!!!! I'll be listening to my "New Acoustic Movement" compilations from now on!!!!!!!

Signed,
Insane Voice of Meaningfullness

And no, I am not exaggerating!!!!! Well, OK, only a little!!!!! Still, it's most amusing to see people whining about tha Biz "selling out" when at around the same time last year the same band were doing the flipping movie theme tune to Mission Impossible 2!!!!! (And it was a jokey novelty re-working of the really rather ace original MI theme tune!!!!!!!) And it's also interesting to see Limp Bizkit, of all bands, inspiring a generation gap of "new/old" fan emnity that seriously rivals the Manics Street Preachers "old/new" fan battles!!!!!!!!

The Iron Lady: created by Commies!!!!!!

On 24 Jan 1976 some Soviet newspaper called Red Star called Margaret Thatcher the "Iron Lady"!!!!!!!!

Today's rather bizzare idea!!!!!!!

If you don't want to get old, hang yourself when you're young. [Alternatively, just grow old and realise that being young wasn't exactly all it was cracked up to be!!!!!!!!!!!]

Mixing ones metaphors- like a bull in a china shop!!!!!!

Apparently, Scotland has a good reputation for it's education!!!!!! Wot a shame some of our local political folk don't avail themselves of it a bit more!!!!!!! Presumably they are of the opinion, in the sage words of a certain local councillor, that "a leopard cannae change it's horses midstream!!!!!!!!"!!!!!!!

Still, you'd expect some enobled gent to at least know a few things about nursery rhymes!!!!!!! According to this story:

"He [Henry MacLeish] has marched us to the top of the hill on this. People would take it remiss if he marched us down again," said Sir Stewart Sutherland

Erm, well, if Mr MacLeish is genuinely being likened to The Grand Old Duke of York, then people would in fact "take it remiss" if he failed to follow in the Duke's footsteps and march down tha hill, only to repeat said up/down manouvere numerous times!!!!! Unless of course Mr MacLeish is not supposed to follow the Duke's example, in which case, the comparision is completely irrelevent, until such time as he were to echo the movements of the Grand Old Duke of York!!!!!! But given that such an eventuality is in the future, then it's a bit of a waste of time, really!!!!! Because... OK, I'll shut up now!!!!!!!!!!

Tony Blair: "a shit"!!!!!!!

And continuing the "feacal" f(th)eme (!!!!) .... Blimey!!!!!!! The Glasgow Herald is getting even more "liberal" in it's use of "direct" language!!!!!! We've already had the "Bullshit Buzzer", now they've dropped the "bull"!!!!!!!! And had it applied to no less a personage than tha PM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He told them he thought Blair was a shit, a comment I would find difficult to challenge on the grounds of objective accuracy, but parliamentary language it isn't.

One would thought that young chap William Hague would have picked up on that one!!!!!!! After all, he's used nearly every other possible crap insult!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stop light reaching your glasses- by availing yourself of "optical molasses"!!!!!!!

Yikes!!!!!! Some folks have managed to work out how to "stop" light using what they call "optical molasses"!!!!!!!!!!! "It's as if you stretched a silk thread across a railroad track and a train vanishes into it" said some bloke.

U-no, they would have of couse achieved such an objective quicker if they had followed my suggestions from an old ish of SC!!!!!!! And it would have been less expensive!!!!! Instead of using an expensive physics experiment, they could have just got Bob The Builder in!!!!!!!

Brit Poop, more like!!!!!! (!!!)

Thanks to those jolly nice peeps at "New York, London, Paris, Munich", I have been alerted to this one!!!!! Some music w3zine called "Dancing About Architecture" (As in the famous statement that to the effect that writing about about music is akin to dancing about architecture, which makes one wonder why these folks named their music writing zine thusly!!!!!!! I mean, one might as well call it "Completely pointless!!!!!!" or "We're Crap!!!!!!!!!!"!!!!!! Er, where was I again?!?!??!?! Oh yes!!!!!)

These folks at the bizzarely named NetWebPub (!!!!!!!) have come up with a rather amusing "British" themed zine!!!!! Actually, it's a nice idea, given the current US dominance of UK pop media (ie if a band get 10 number 1s in the UK, but only one top 10 in US, don't expect them to get a nice write-up in VH1's "Behind The Music"!!!!!) but look at the flippin' CD revoo section, which includes such hot tips as Coldplay and The Beautiful South!!!!!!!!!! I mean, haven't these folks even heard of Gilbert O'Sullivan!??!?!??!!

Juvenille deliquents = Vampires!!!!!!!

I've been having a look at my calender to see if I've fallen alseep for a couple of months, and inadvertedly woken up on April 1st!!!!!!!!!!!

Why?!?? Well, read this, and no doubt you'll be put in the same "time-warp" delusion mode!!!!!!! Apparently one of the world's most famous comic writers, a young Scottish chap by the name of Mark Millar, is creating a new tellybox series for Channel 4!!!!!!!!!!!

So wot, you might moan!!!!!!! Well, check this out for the idea behind the series: young ruffians living on a housing estate in Coatbridge- (just outside Glasgow, Scotland for all you folks in other regions!!!!) who are vampires!!!!!!! It's billed as a kind of "Buffy meets Trainspotting"!!!!!!!! And it's called... "Neds"!!!!!!!!!!!

US President Causes Massive Tectonic Plate Shift!!!!!!

This might be the last Senior Citizen ever!!!!!! Because I might be drowned tonight!!!!!! Why?!?!?! Well, I'm expecting a rather massive tidal wave to be sweeping around the world, eventually reaching our shores and submerging everything in sight!!!!!!!!!

Hmmmmm!!!!! So you wonder what would cause such a calamitous event?!?!! Well, it appears the United States of America has shifted massively West-ward!!!!!!! In an otherwise run-of-the-mill article about George "Dubya" (Some nice young man told me that "Dubya" was "Texan for 'reformed cokehead' "- but I could be wrong!!!!!!! And, while we're on the subject, what exactly is wrong with drinking Coca-Cola anyway?!?!?) Bush, there is contained within a sentence of extraordinary ramifications for humankind!!!!!!!!!!

The day Bush was sworn in, the Atlantic doubled in width.

Errr... This tidal wave does seem to be taking it's time tho!!!!!! Still- enough time to finish of a couple more stories!!!!!! Great, huh!!!!!!!

So much for "dour" Scots!!!!!!!

Well, I never!!!!!!! Apparently us Scots are not a bunch of humourless cretins after all!!! According to some survey, we were the the happiest folks in the UK last year!!!!!!!!

Next they'll be finding out we don't all wear kilts all the time or venture out of our "crofts" to go running around the "glens" and "lochs" shooting "haggis"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GoonsDay!!!!!!

The Goon Show started today in 1952!!!!!!!!!! Apparently it was really good!!!!!!!! Unfortunately I was at the "ballroom dancing" when it was on!!!!!!!!

Monday's "Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before!!!" Quote!!!!

"Those in the cheaper seats clap. The rest of you rattle your jewellery."
- John Lennon [Cripes!!! That one keeps coming back more often than yet another flipping Beatles compilation!!!!!!!!!]

Start tha Universe- with dumbo quarks!!!

Talking of boy band fans, here's a new concept for you: Dense Matter!!!!!!!! Yes, this matter is not-too-bright and a bit slow moving!!!!!! And it might be the type of matter that existed a few "millionths" of a second into the existance of tha Universe, then disappeared!!!!! Presumably by the end of that time it had went to school or something!!!!!!!!!!! Mind you, it's said to still exist in neutron stars, which are reknowned for being spectacularly "thick" and "dim"!!!!!!!!!

Fans zapped!!!!!

U-no, I saw some crap boy band on tha tellybox the other night!!!!! But what I didn't know what that I was watching the future of computing!!!!!! (Which was jolly ironic, as I was thinking at the time that I was actually watching the future of robotics!!!!!!!!!!) Yep, fresh faced youngsters like A1 might have something in common with the computes of tomorrow- they depend on "armies of very small fans"!!!!!!!!!!!

Of course there will be a difference!!!! According to this article, the fans in the computes will be 8 millimetres across, use "scratch drives", and will cool microchips!!!!!!! And they'll be a bit more intelligent presumably.

A galaxy of music- literally!!!!! (Almost!!!!)

Crikey!!!!!! The new epoch of digital audio has finally arrived, and I didn't realise it!!!!!!! This is truly a Big Day for tha NetWeb!!!!!!!!

Wot do you mean "Oh calm down, you silly old man!!!!"?!??!? OK, here's the story... Wot with Napster going all fee-paying, and also due to the fact that, thanks to Napster's not-very-user-friendly interface, one can download a file called "BRITN~1.MP3", and listen to it, and hear some crap "alternative" band from "Austin" do a really dire song called something like "Britney Sucks!!!!!!" type nonsense, I've been looking for an alternative Nappy clone that's much better!!!!!!

So here's a jolly nice one called called Audiogalaxy!!!!!!! You just download a nice little P2P client, and let their spiffy w3site interface do the rest!!!!! Even better it recognises the ID3 tags on mpeggies, and keeps track of identical copies of files, so as to allow for sensible distribution of popular files!!!! There's also a growing database of songs and artists which can allow you to find even not-so-popular stuffs!!!

Anyway, that's by the by- what's really exciting is that the Audiogalaxy "satellite" has finally passed the "Grandad Test"!!!! Yes!!!! As postulated in an early issue of SC, the Grandad Test was a measure of how mainstream NetWeb audio file distribution had become!!!! Now we know that file-swapping has truly hit the big time, when you can now get a copy of "Grandad" by Clive Dunn in mpeggy format!!!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't been this impressed by the marvels of science since I first saw Man Walk on the Moon, or played Kerplunk!!!!!

(Thanks to NTK for alerting us to this site!!!!!)

Watch out Westlife- it's a negative growth rate!!!!!

Apparently the world market might be going into a bit of a downturn!!!!!!!!! But if it does, don't worry!!!!! You'll be able to turn on the radio and not suffer S Club 7 or such simmilar dross again!!!!! That's because according to this bloke, a recession is good for pop music!!!!!!!! Except that of course a lot of people won't be able to afford these brillibobs pop records!!!!

This ain't no small beer!!!!! (Doh!!!!)

Well, if you want to really extend your pursuit of ecological conciousness, then you can apply it to the pursuit of diminishing ones conciousness- at tha pub, that is!!!! Yes, you can now get loadsa "real ale" type drinks at watering holes now- and even at pubs!!!!!!! And you don't even have to wear a wooly jumper or don a fake bushy beard to drink them now!!!!

So, it's about time a wacky w3site like The Real Beer Page has appeared isn't it?!?!?! And I see one Michael Jackson is doing reviews for it!!!!!! No wonder he's taking so long to finish that album of his!!!!! He must be getting drunk all the time on industrial strength Real Ale!!!!!! Mind you, I dunno if that picture him is the right one!!!!!! Unless of course, he's had plastic surgery.

Farmers: get rid of your ploughs!!!!!!

Well, here's one way to improve the quality of one's "ecological footprint"!!!!! Apparently there's this thingy called "sustainable farming", which is becoming all the rage (And no doubt really cheesing off those Monsanto type peeps) by ditching all the big business end of farming, including ploughs!!!!!! Apparently, the amount of farmland using this technique is "an area the size of Italy"!!!!!! (Though no mention is made of whether this inlcudes the Vatican City or not!!!!!!!!) And wot's more impressive is that it's so popular because it works jolly well and sends farm yields "soaring"!!!!!!! Erm, wouldn't one need a rocket or something for that!??!?!??!

Old Fart's feet: smaller than that of a US citizen- ecologically speaking!!!!

Well, to be honest, I didn't know my tootsies were that small!!!!!! By which I of course mean my ecological footprint as found by this spiffy site!!!!! Despite the apparently "leading" questions, I still managed to score the following:

YOUR RESULTS: 
Food Footprint: 1.8 hectares or 4.5 acres 
Transportation Footprint: 0.6 hectares or 1.5 acres 
Housing Footprint: 0.6 hectares or 1.6 acres 
Other Footprints: 1.1 hectares or 2.8 acres 
Total Footprint: per person 4.2 hectares or 10.4 acres 
IN COMPARISON: 
Your Eco-Footprint measures 41.2 % of an average 
American Footprint. 
Worldwide, the biologically productive space available per 
person is 2.2 hectares or 5.4 acres.

Well, OK, I'm not quite at the "biologically productive" level yet- tho certain individuals party to my antics in the bedroom department might strongly disagree!!!!!

The Big Dog's Breakfast, more like!!!!

Dunno about you, but I personally cannot wait to get this week over with!!!!! Next week, Channel 4's early morning stalwart, the Big Breakfast is getting relaunched after presenters Johnny Vaughn and Denise Van-Outen said their farewells last week!!!!!! In the interim period, most of the house is getting done up in preparation for the relaunch, and cramped into the spare spaces in the house are a procession of guest presenters on the show, and... Arrrggghh!!!! The weakest link in the BB chain- Richard Bacon!!!!!

Honestly!!!! I don't think I've seen a show plummet so fast!!!!!!! Even the new weather presenter, plucked at random from a crowd of hopefuls in rehearsals is better than this buffoon!!!!! Imagine a cross between Jeremy Paxman (without the intellect!!!) and Terry Christian (without the vaguely amusing fluffs and bumbling bits!!!!!) and then imagine this creature being as rude and patronising to everyone as possible!!!!! I've lost count of the amount of times he's told people to "shut up" in a vaguely "ironic" way!!! Even when he attempts to tell "jokes", it's completely ruined by a delivery and look that screams out: "I'm being really funny here, you know!!!!!! So would you shut up and pay attention!!!!!!!!!" And the way he orders people about: "Right, now go over there!!!!! No, over there!!!!! Now, stop!!!!! Right, now shut up, I'm talking!!!!!!!" He might as well grow a toothbrush moustache!!!!!!!!!

And he's one of the five new presenters starting next week!!!!!!! So, sort yourself out, Richard!!!!! Or you soon might not have a Big Breakfast crew to order about!!!!!!

Prisioner: Cell Block A!!!!!

Apparently the modern versh of Australia as we know it started today in 1788 with a bunch of "crims" in Botany Bay!!!!!!! We dunno if there was any "Top Dog" called "Bea" tho!!!! [Memo to self- add in crap "jokes" about nations descended from convicts here...]

Todays dire attempt at a "pearl" of wisdom!!!!!!

Vacation is what you take when you can't take what you've been taking any longer. [Next week: taking a dump is what you "do" when you "do" what you "do" until you can't "do" anymore because you have to stop to "do" a do-do!!!!!!]

Americans buy virgin from Denmark!!!!!

On Jan 17 1917, the US paid Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands!!!! So if you wonder why the US folks kept out of WW1 for most of it's duration, it was because they were saving up for a nice little holiday home in the sea!!!!!

Utterly mystifying Wednesday quote!!!!!

A food is not necessarily essential just because you child hates it. [!??!?! Well, I would have thought that one was obvious!!!!! I mean, even adults would draw the line at eating old boots for dinner!!!!!]

Spooky Tuesday!!!!

Apparently on Jan 16 1981, "John Lennon released 'Woman'"... Which, when you think of it, is not bad going for someone who had just been shot dead less than a month before!!!!!!!

An abundance of stupidity!!!!!!!

The two most adundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidty. [And the spooky thing is... We still don't know exactly how abundant hydrogen is!!!!!!!]

"shaft-u.com"!!!!!!!

Blimey!!!! The venerable ancient Scottish broadsheet The Glasgow Herald must be starting to get a little "bolshy" in it's old age when it starts printing letters like this!!!!!!!!!

Happy people: get rid of economists!!!!!!

Mind you, if the economists start including the concept of "happiness" in their economic polices, they might be doing themselves out of a job!!!!!!!! That's because according to this article, there's some folks that believe that globalistic capitalism can be defeated- by smiling!!!!!! "When these capitalist bastards see everyone smiling, they won't know what to do." said some (evidently very jolly) bloke.

Economists: make people happy!!!!!!

Favourites of the wooly-jumper brigade, the Guardian newspaper has come up with a real scoop!!!!!!! Apparently, money doesn't make you happy!!!!!!!

So wot, you might bawl!!!!!! But apparently economists have only just come to this startling conclusion!!!!! And apparently, they're now calling for notions of happiness to be included in economic policy!!!!!!!!

Apparently, this is really new stuff to them!!!!!! Mentioned in the article are ideas inspired by Jung and E.F. Schumacher's 30 year-old tome "Small is Beautiful"!!!!!!

Wow!!!! These folks are really on the ball, aren't they!!!!! Just the sort of dudes we need to help us through the projected economic downturn!!!!!!!

That banner on the top of the page is even crapper now!!!!!!

By Jove!!!!!!!! Apparently the ad revenues for Yahoo!(!!!!) and Doubleclick are going downhill el pronto!!!!!!!!!!! Looks like a lot of people are starting to form the opinion than banner ads aren't really very effective!!!!!!!!!

Quake III: "the Lord would not touch this with a forty-foot pole"!!!!!!

Of course, certain folks might not like the above item!!!!! So just for them, here's a novel idea: video games reviews conducted by fundamentalist Christians!!!!!!!! Here's a review of that all-round wholesome game Quake III, which apparently this reviewer did not particularly like!!!!!! "I played hours of it before the Lord sincerely convicted me to the heart about the sinful nature of the game."!!!!!!

Erm, small question- why did you play it for hours regardless of how "sinful" it was?!?!??! And you required divine intervention to come to such a realisation!??!?!??! I mean, I would have thought that the big pentagram dripping blood on the front cover of the box would have been a vague enough hint that this might possibly be a rather "naughty" game!!!!!!!!

Crikey!!!!!!! No wonder people like this need to be guided by a "higher power" if this example of consumer apathy is any indication!!!!!!!

Keep "abreast" of your sleeping situation- literally!!!!!!!

Well, as those nice young folks in that beat combo Cornershop once sang: "Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow"!!!!!!!!!! And now you can have a bosom for a pillow- literally!!!!!!!! Well, almost literally!!!!!! Check this one out- TitPillows!!!!!!!!! Two quids of the price for one of these "busty" bed implements goes to charity- tho I hope it's not Breast Cancer Research or something!!!!!!! That would be a pretty big "Boob"!!!! (Doh!!!!!!)

Oh no, it's cricket again!!!!!!

Apparently Mike Gatting did pretty well in a game of cricket today in 1985... Big deal!!!!!!

Habitual Monday!!!!!!

An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones. [Well, I personally find listening to Westlife a stupendously easy habit to give up!!!!!!!! Wot a shame others don't share my powers of determination!!!!!!!!]

Too busy thinking about- Sitwell!!!!!

I have often wished I had timme to cultivate modesty... But I am too nust thinking about myself.
- Dame Edith Sitwell. [Well, with such a ridiculous name, anyone would be pretty obsessed with their self-image!!!!!!!!]

Don't forget the dividend!!!!!!

Hey, the Co-op first opened a supermarket in 1948!!!!!!!!! Wot a shame they don't have to many Co-ops up in Scotland now!!!!! Apart from the funeral parlours obviously!!!!!!! But I don't exactly want to go there to get my Fresh 'n Lo!!!!!!!!]

Friday's discretionary quote!!!!!!

A clever man can always tell a woman's age; a wise one never does. [Of course, in this age of equal opportunities, it also applies to ladies regarding the age of the more mature man!!!!!!!!! So, Ladies, I would appreciate a little less of comments along the lines of "You look very good for someone who should be dead!!!!!!!!!"!!!!!!!!]

Sexy Tuplets Day!!!!

The first surviving sextuplets were born today in 1974!!!!!!!!! I hope their dad wasn't drinking too much before the birth!!!!!!!! If he was seeing double, who knows what trouble might have resulted!!!!!!!!!]

!!!!!nagolS sdrawkcaB s'yadruhT (Thursday's Backwards Slogan!!!!!!!!)

Invention is the mother of necessity. [... And as those young Beach Boys chaps once sang, "The Child Is The Father Of The Man"!!!!!!!!!!!]

Italy splits up Germany!!!!!

Well, this factoid seems a bit strange to say the least!!!!! Apparently 2day on Jan 10 1997, Italy's new 1000 lire coin showed a divided Germany on it's map!!!!!!!!! Er, doesn't that mean it's a bit out of date then!??!??!?!?

Wednesday bizzaro quoto!!!!!

Weed- a plant whose vitures have not yet been discovered.
- Ralph Waldo Emmerson. [Somehow I think some hippies would disagree with that!!!!!!!!]

X-Rated Lego!!!!!

Looks like old friend Lego is undergoing a bit a rennaisance at the mo!!!!!!!! First they added robotics, now they're adding Steven Speilberg!!!!!!!! Yes, the director of Jurassic Park 2 and other classic movies has lent his name to a new Lego set which includes a digicam and PC software, which allows afficionadios of tha mighty brick to make their own Lego Movies!!!!!!!!!!!

And movies are starting to appear on tha NetWeb now!!!!!!!! Already we've got Lego Video Nasties and Lego Porno!!!!!!!!!!

No doubt, we'll be having Lego Reality Docu-soaps next!!!!!!! At least they'll be more interesting than the real thing!!!!!!!!!

Are rivers next for tha chop?!?!?!?

Hello people!!!! Have any of you folk been on tha NetWeb 2day??!?! Well, obviously, you're on it now!!!!!! Trying to get hold of Senior Citizen without being on tha NetWeb is a bit difficult!!!!!! Unless you've rreceived an offline copy of this page from a friend- in which case, you can get your friend to read this story instead!!!!

Woops, where was I!??!?!? Anyway!!!! You folks on tha w3!!!!!! Have you been listening to any streaming audio/vid stuffs!??!?!?! Well, isn't it annoying how crap they are!?!??!?! They usually look like they've been recorded on a Super 8 in 1968, transferred to a home videogram in 1974, digitised on a Acorn Electron in 1985, and then encoded into MPEG format using a 286 PC in 1994!!!!!! And that's before we get to the "transferred over a 1432 baud connection by a server running on a Sinclair Spectrum" type speeds!!!!!!!!!

So wot can we do?!?!?! Well, you could help solve the problem by streaming some stuff by Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain!!!! That's because they're both dead!!!!!!!

Yes, that's right, some bod is proposing the "death" of streaming!!!!!!!!!!

It's like Dateline- with crap music!!!!!!!!!!

Well, as you might know, it's Lunar Eclipse Night here on Bonney Scotland!!!!!!!! So for all you 98% of readers from outside the UK, you'll have to find something else to do!!!!!! Especially if you're a sad indie spod!!!!!!!! Well, help is on the way, thanks to a spiffy w3site called The Make Out Club- a "courting" service for... sad indie spods!!!!!! Which is amusing given the popularity, amongst such souls, of a beat combo called Limp Bizkit!!!!!! Mind you, it could be worse!!!! It could be a UK band called "Half Mast"!!!!!!!

It's like the ocean- only with digital media!!!!!!

U-no, when all this handheld computing malarkey starts taking off, you're going to have a new problem to content with- where do you stick all your data!??!?!?! You can't exactly go walking around with about 20 squillion Zip disks in your pockets, can you?!??!?! If everybody did that, and had loads of magnetic media on their person, compasses would stop pointing north and aeroplanes would arrive in the wrong place!!!!!!!!

So how to solve this pressing problem!?!?!? Well, one way would be to toddle along to the Western Isles and jump off a cliff into tha Big Briney!!!!!!! (By which I of course mean the Atlantic Ocean, not the innards of a rotund bloke called Brian!!!!!)

Seems unlikely?!??!?! Well, you'd be wrong!!!!!!!!! In fact, the boffins at DARPA, the original brains behind tha NetWeb, are working on a Freenet/Gnutella/PloppyTrader stylee data storage network called OceanStore!!!!!!!!!! Only prob- won't the data get a little soggy?!??!?!?

Today's interesting dictionary definition!!!

budget, n. A method for going broke methodically. [I don't remember seeing this in any dictionary I've read, and I've read a lot!!!!!! U C, I know a lot of big words, I do!!!!!!! And I have amassed a significantly sizeable quoitent of capital in the area of vocabulary!!!!!! So ya boo sucks!!!!!! etc. OK, I'll shut up now!!!!!!]

X-Rated Tuesday!!!!!

Hey!!!! Apparently today in 1951 was when they gave the first ever "X" rating to a film in the UK!!!!!! It was called "Life After Tommorrow"!!!!!!!! And they probably show on Channel 4 in the afternoon these days!!!!!!!! Otherwise I would have heard of it!!!!!!!!!!!

Bedtime stories: banned!!!!!!!

Remember when your old folks used to tell you bedtime stories?!?!??!?!? I know I do!!!!!!! Classic stories like Cinderella, Snow White, The St Valentines Day Massacre, and whatnot!!!!!!!! But it looks like there's one classic that one won't be able to read to one's progeny!!!!!!!!! According to the finding of this clever young chap, the newly published e-book version of Lewis Caroll's Alice In Wonderland has a rather unusual user license requirement- reading it aloud ain't allowed!!!!!!!!! Presumably if you try it, you'll get "busted" by "fuzz"!!!!!!!!

No doubt in future this will lead to numerous children being drawn into a seedy underworld of "speakeasies" where they can listen to popular childrens books or something!!!!!!!!!!!! Mind you, I wouldn't want to be the equivalent of "Elliot Ness" in such an enviroment!!!!!!! If I had never touched a drop of illicit literature in my life, I would probably be about as intelligent as a Radio Clyde DJ!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Devil is a right Charlie- literally!!!!

Don't you just love End-Of-World doomsters!??!?!?! As soon as one "end-of-the-world" scenario fails to materialise, they go and look for another!!!!!!! Now that it's patently obvious that Y2K has failed to cause the usual floods, famines, breakdown in society, etc, ... it looks like wacky US "survivalist" types have found another dire threat!!!!!! Apparently the new Prince of Darkness is the Prince of Wales!!!!!!!!!! And it's about time as well!!!!!! I was wondering when the armies of God would be riding on in to save humanity from a load of waffly speeches about architecture and GM crops!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rod Stewart: he doesn't have an "unbelievably small backside"!!!!!!!!

Crikey!!!! Even Rod Stewart's starting to admit to feeling a bit old now!!!!!!!!!!

"I'm still very presentable but I just can't keep up with Mick," he said, referring to Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stones frontman. "He has an unbelievably small backside and that's what women go for," he said.

Mysteriously enough, he's promoting a new album called "Human", which presumably expands on this "I'm just an ordinary bloke now" type stuffs!!!!!!! Mind you, it could be worse!!!!! He could have titled it "Rod Stewart And His Unfeasibly Large Backside"!!!!!!!!!!

Wot would Leonard Cohen say!??!?!?!?

Mind you, that's not the only case of mistaken memory in today's old fogey press!!!!!!! Some bloke called Fergal (tho he's no Sharkey!!!!!!!) is getting all wibbly about reaching 40 and feeling "past it"!!!!!! (You're only as old as you feel, young man!!!!!!!!)

Which is jolly ironic is he mentions in the article that he is "40, still wearing Levi's and workshirts and listening to Neil Young and James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. And yes, from to time I even sneak a listen to Songs of Leonard Cohen: "I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel..." " Which is of course complete crap, as said Leonard Cohen song does not in fact appear on the Songs Of Leonard Cohen album but the New Skin For The Old Ceremony album!!!!!!!!!

See?!??!?! If a more mature man such as myself can remember such vital facts, then there's no excuse for some mere fortysomething to lose his memory cells!!!!!!!!!!

Predict the future of the Single European Currency- and become a serial killer!!!!!!

Here's an interesting declaration from that brillibobs Indie scribe Simon "Two Brains" Carr:

"The euro has already begun to strengthen against the dollar, and that will probably continue," said John Monks, the union leader, quite as if he knew what he was talking about.

The fact is, he doesn't know. The other fact is that nobody knows. And the last, most interesting fact is that nobody can know. Anyone who says they know is a salesman or a psycho.

Crikey!!!!! Imagine that!!!!!!!!!! Arthur Daley or Norman Bates advising governments on economic matters!!!!!!!!!

Just as well that this situation is a little unlikely!!!!! Especially given that they are fictional characters!!!!!!!!!!

Watch out- it's the gastrobots!!!!!!!!!

U-no, you might dimly remember the olden days when as a young sprite you were given dinner by your parents, and told to eat the savoury stuff before the sweets!!!!!!!!! Much as I would protest that it should be other way round, and serve sweet stuff before the crappy brussell sprouts, they wouldn't take any notice, instead giving some feeble excuse about the savoury stuff apparently being more essential and nutritious!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, now I can laugh in their faces!!!!!!! Well, not literally, obviously!!!!!! I'd have to dig them up first!!!!!!!! And there wouldn't be any faces left for me to laugh at!!!!!!!! But I'm sure they would turn in their graves at the mention of this next story!!!!!! Especially because the coffins were buried with inbuilt "grave rotation devices", which allows the corpses to safely turn 360 degrees in their graves when I press a special button on the mantlepiece in my Drawing Room!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway!!!!!! The parental tyranny of "savoury before sweets" has finally been toppled by a "gastrobot"!!!!!!! Nope, we're not talking about a snail with a tummy ache!!!!!!!!! In fact, we're talking about a robot- which lives on sugar!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So if you're making a cup of tea for this chap, remember to put at least 3 spoonfulls of sugar in it!!!!!!!!!!!

The next HAL: Twiki!!!!!!!

Well, now 2001 is upon is, it looks like there isn't too many years designated in any "significant" sci-fi book/movies coming up in the near future!!!!!!!!! Which is a jolly good thing if you ask me!!!!!!!! Because it means that we won't get any unoriginal rentaquote buffons pointing that such and such "predictions" made in some science fiction tale from "ninteen canteen" weren't really very good!!!!!!!!!

So how long have we got until the next "big" year?!?!?! According to this article, about 400 years!!!!!!!! That's because the next date in the "sci-fi calender" is Buck Rogers in the 25th Century!!!!!!!!!

BTW This article is notable for being written by someone who clearly doesn't actually remember watching Mr Glen "A" Larsons ground breaking tellybox serial!!!!!!! All she seems to remember is that there was a robot called "Tweakey" who went "Beagley, beagley!"!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Maybe she's getting mixed up with K9 or something!!!!!!!)

Jackie gets the Bird!!!!!!!!

So, how was your New Year!??!?! (Or "Hogmany", as we shout around these regions!!!!!!) I had an extremely good piss-up at the Old Folks Home party!!!!!!!!!!! And we had a right good sing-a-long, which broke a few windows!!!!!!! Mind you, it was far preferable to enduring The Proclaimers on the increasingly rubbish tellybox Hogmany coverage!!!!!!!!!!!!

And we weren't the only ones to come to such an informed decision!!!!!!!! In fact, the entire non-TV Scottish media spent a couple of days slagging it off, and taking a particular interest in the "glamourous" dress worn by the presenter of BBC1's effort, Jackie Bird!!!!!!!

John Davidson, The Herald's fashion director, speculated that Ms Bird was following in the perilously high-heeled footsteps of such tele-babes as Carol Vorderman.

But Ms Bird was having none of it. "My gingham, laced-top pinafore was at the cleaners and it was all I had in the wardrobe," she said.

"Anyway, I work damn hard to get into something like that and Hogmanay is the only time to wear it. Your fashion director should join the 21st century."

Some "marketing" student also makes some "naughty" comment!!! "Anyone sad enough to stay in on Hogmanay deserves to be subjected to crap TV."

Wooo!!!! How controversial!!!!!!! Mind you, I think it's a bit "off" to wish The Proclaimers and Deacon Blue even on your worst enemies!!!!!! Still, this is a marketing student we're talking about here!!!!!!!!!!

OK, back to proper work now!!!!!!!

Believe it or not, I've got one or two stories to write today!!!!!!!!!!

A King is born!!!!!!!!!!!

Elvis was born today in 1935!!!!!! No doubt he sounded like this: "Wahhhhh!!!!! Wahhhhh!!!! Wahhhhh!!!!! Thankyouverymuchladies&gentlemen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) weekend quote?!?!

Real friends are those who, when you've made a fool of yourself, don't feel that you've done a permanent job.
-Randell

[Like for example when one stupidly gets knocked down and killed in the course of an investigation, then returns as a ghost and gets stranded, just like in "Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)"!!!!!!!!! What do you mean "It's the wrong Randall!!!"??!?!?!?!?]

Brilliantly cynical Monday morning quotee!!!!

Early morning cheerfullness can be extremely abnoxious.
-William Feather

[Ready, everyone... 1, 2, 3... "Well, you could knock me down with a feather!!!!!!!!"]