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Thursday 20 November 2008
Blunkett
Oh but wouldn't it be lovely if David Blunkett was brought crashing down by the palaver around his ex-lover's nanny? Sadly, the teflon nature of this vile government will probably extend even to its vilest member, and he'll continue to plague our lives with his nonsensical policies and holier-than-thou attitudes.
Outside (apparently) of the government, does anyone know *anyone* with even the tiniest shred of respect for him? Because I've never met anyone who does.
Sorry All You Gamblers Out There
But after a spate of spam comments lately (more than fifty in the last three days, not counting the ones caught by my filters), I'm now barring any comment which uses the words 'casino' or 'poker'. Words cannot describe how fucked off I am at having to do so.
I use MT-Blacklist to try and avoid these, which does a sterling job of checking those incoming comments, but which is at the end of the day always going to be a step behind human ingenuity in coming up with quirks to banned URLs. Why hence I'm taking a more blanket approach.
I hate the people who perpetrate these things more than I do those who deal in email spam.
Happy Running Dave
Dave is taking part in the Nike London Run 10 kilometre run this evening, so I just wanted to wish him well.
Have fun....
Been A While....
....since I blogged about The West Wing. The reason is that because of the way C4 schedule it I've had to give up on terrestrial broadcast, and it's taken me a while to get through my box set of Season Four.
But I just watched the end of the final episode, 25, and all I can say is "Oh my word". It's a patchy season, and while the best of it is among the very best the series has ever offered, some of the less inpressive episodes really fell incredibly flat. But the closing five or six episodes all work beautifully. Even one as apparently inconsequential as Evidence Of Things Not Seen does the kind of character work that most series never even bother to try.
Now I want to start the whole thing over, and I haven't felt like that since watching the last episode of Buffy.
The Adventures Of Dave and Dan
We picked up some DVDs yesterday, and last night watched Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure, which is a follow-up of sorts to Are You Dave Gorman? the Edinburgh show/TV series in which Dave Gorman set out to find a number of people with the same name as him.
Googlewhack is a slightly different proposition, involving him meeting people who run sites that result from Googlewhack Google searches, having them find two more Googlewhacks and then following up to try and meet the owners of the sites, etc etc. His aim was an unbroken chain of ten Googlewhacks.
Somewhere between Are you... and the new show, Gorman has adapted a rather angrier style, with quite a lot of the show crossing over the line between manic and aggressive, but it's still funny, and very cleverly presented - the use of slides to illustrate the points along the way remains from the earlier show.
Concurrently, I'm reading Join Me, Danny Wallace's book about the Join Me campaign he started a few years ago. I remember when everyone was emailing round about what this strange thing could be all about at the time. The point, such that there was one, is that he set out to get 100 people to Join Him. Join him in what? Well, in being joined, basically.
The connection is that Wallace and Gorman used to be flat mates, and Wallace was the person who went on Gorman's original challenge with him.
The two together have put me in an odd frame of mind - I do find myself wanting to be set a challenge of some description, though what it would be I wouldn't like to say.
By The Way
You may have missed that there was another fairly significant vote in the House of Lords this week.
This one in fact: Lords back rights for gay couples.
That's it. Royal assent by the end of the year, then some time next year we can start to share the legal rights and obligations that have been the exclusive domain of straight couples until now.
Which reminds me - did I ask someone to marry me in the last few months?
Part Troll (Don't Ask Which Part)
David and I went to see Bill Bailey's live show Part Troll tonight - it's bloody hilarious, though I probably won't ever be the full-on Bailey fan that David is. He's got a great line in musical pastiche, taking a song and recreating it in an unlikely style. His Kraftwerk version of the Hokey Cokey was a highlight, as was the genius street rhythm piece inspired by the BBC News theme.
Of course, now I'm prowling round the flat unable to sleep, and that's annoying.
Uncivil
I listened in some fascination to reports on the radio this morning, as I have all week, regarding the Fox Hunting Ban. This morning the focus is on the upcoming legal challenge to the Parliament Act, and also the campaign of 'civil disobedience' which hunt supporters are proposing.
I'll come to the Parliament Act in a minute, but the disobedience is interesting. To start with, there are some people who say they'll just carry on hunting anyway, which is their choice as far as breaking the law is concerned. The law will deal with them in its own way I'm sure, and there will be some suitable outrage in the Telegraph when people are arrested for breaking an unequivocal law.
On the other hand, entirely within the law, people are planning on denying access over their land to (non-government) people who currently need it. People who maintain waterways and railway lines for instance, or the power companies who have pylons sited on private land. One guy interviewed this morning apparently has three electricity pylons on his land that he's going to ask to have moved.
Depending on the actual number of landowners who are planning on undertaking this kind of campaign and how co-ordinated they are, it's possible that they will in fact create a significant amount of disruption. Someone appears to have been thinking this through.
On the subject of the Parliament Act, former Master of the Rolls Lord Donaldson was on Today this morning, and thinks that there's a case to be made for the Act as it stands not being 'legal'. But I have to say that the principle of the elected house being sovereign does somewhat undermine the argument in practice, which is that a Bill should go back and forth to the Lords over three years, rather than two.
(The point is that the original agreement between the Houses back in 1911 was that the Commons can impose a Bill against the wishes of the Lords if it's been presented to the Lords for revision over three sessions. The 1949 version, which the Lords rejected, brought that three down to two.)
Brrrr
Well that was an interesting start to the day - scraping ice off the car at 6.30. When I don't actually have an ice scraper.
I thought all cars came with a fairly basic scraper, but clearly I was wrong. I guess I'd better find one, hadn't I?
Crazy Bonkers
I've had the weirdest bit of smail mail I think I've ever received this week: An invitation to invest in the production of a new film based on Hemingway's Garden of Eden.
Now obviously I'm impresed by their drive, and wish them every success both in finding investors and in the ultimate success of the production, but I'm left a bit thrown by the quality of their marketing data.
What is it about my profile that triggered me as a recipient? Could it be my scads of disposable income? Or my extensive track record in cinema production investment? Maybe I should contact them and find out.
Tolerance And Understanding
"Murder maddens and some good people have accordingly gone mad. On one centre-left website, a Dutch writer expressed fury that a TV presenter had argued that the killing meant Dutch society had to do some "soul searching". "Dutch society has (to do) much soul searching?" the writer (taking the handle of "Voltaire") asked angrily, adding: "Theo wasn't killed by Dutch society but by a Muslim. But then Muslims rarely do much soul searching."
See that? In a blink of a cursor? See how "a Muslim" so quickly became "Muslims"? There are a billion Muslims with a hundred thousand interpretations of the Koran, but they are all now transformed into the Muslim who killed Van Gogh. "
David Aaronovich notes in today's Guardian that negative reaction to the murder of the Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh is not necessarily coming from the places one might expect.
Halo Again
Yes, I will confess that I've been playing it. And it's very good of its type I guess, though truthfully that's not a type that appeals to me all that very much. Just blasting away at everything that moves is a bit dull to me. Technically, absolutely stunning though - some of the environments have to be seen to be believed.
The Sad Life Of The Halo Widow
So Halo 2 was released today, to the energetic excitement of at least one member of my household, who had a copy safely purchased and stowed in his bag before he even got to work this morning.
The next few evenings are, I suspect, going to be given over to Halo Fever....
Bush In 'Intolerant Bigot' Shock!
I wish I could say that I'm remotely surprised.
Bastard.
Gay Marriage - Practice Not Principle
I should have mentioned sooner, but things have been a bit crazy - my ex, Chris, who a number of people reading this will know, got married at the weekend to his partner Brian. I'd have loved to have been able to be there, but practicalities intruded. They went to Vancouver for the ceremony, because the extremely enlightened Canadians understand that gay marriage is not going to rip apart the fabric of our societies.
It's a couple of days late, gentlemen, but all my very best for a long and happy future together.
What's Going On?
Check out the recent comments and you'll see a number that have appeared over the last few days, all on old postings (from 2002 in fact), each of which has text that looks like generic spam comment text, but the link, which let's face it is the point of comment spam, is to a site which doesn't exist. I've done a Google search on the only full name that's offered, and found another blog with a similar non-pertinent comment from the same non-working link.
Rack my brains as I might I can't think of a reason for it that makes sense.
Anyideas? Or anyone else getting them?
London's Getting A Bit Scary
I've followed with interest the story of David Morley, who was beaten to death on the South Bank a few nights ago, including the news that six people have been arrested over the incident.
But today, showing how grim things actually can be in this city, we find that a man has been repeatedly stabbed in a homophobic attack on a bus.
Not a great week to be gay on either side of the Atlantic.
Seriously Serious
Another Millarworlder, starting a thread called "Not my country any more":
"What happened to this country? As dispiriting as the win Bush took is, it isn't unprecedented – Nixon won reelection, and I think we all agree he was a piece of shit. My father has told me how that victory shook his faith in the country and the system, and I think this win will do that for a lot of young people. It seems unbelievable that so many Americans could look at the lies and the economy – hello, Ohio, you economy is devastated! – and the war and still vote for Bush.
But looking at the congressional races you realize it’s partially because the Democratic party is a dead one. Their time is over – they can’t even pull a legislative referendum off on this guy, a president who has been opposed by the fucking Economist and tons of serious conservatives. It’s a party that was trying to coast solely on the force of Bill Clinton’s likability, and it will be interesting to see the bloodbath that occurs in the party in the next two years.
Although who cares in the end? The gay marriage votes show that this is a country I cannot respect and support. The people of this nation are motivated by prejudice and rage, we’re a cowardly and superstitious electorate firmly in the hand of Sky Daddy and his Earthly minions and tithe-gatherers. In all of my years as a political junkie and activist I have never been so deeply disappointed in the people of the United States, and I think maybe I just don’t care about them anymore. I don’t feel like I belong to this country, where a warmonger, deficit builder and proven liar can win the popular vote by a handy margin, and where the people overwhelmingly vote to deny rights to people simply based on who they have sex with.
In the past I thought that no matter how screwy things were here on a regular basis this was at heart a good country, a decent country, a country filled with people who just wanted to live and let live and who cherished freedom and honesty. Turns out I was wrong. America, a nation that has become a fundamentalist hellhole, is no longer even remotely the greatest nation in the world.
I don't even know how to live in an island of blue state decency surrounded by a sea of red state horror."
Gloom Too
By the way - if anyone missed it in the overwhelming coverage of the US election, the following is more depressing still - you have been warned.
Ten states which were running anti-gay marriage referenda saw those measures supported by large majorities. And in several of those states, there were already definitions on the statute books which limit marriage to unions involving a man and a woman, so they're redundant at best, and just straightforwardly brutal and bigoted at worst.
Pete Mortensen is a Millarworlder who just started a blog, and has something to say about this issue that is better put than I will manage, so please go and read it.
Gloom
Well after even the Republican pollster they rolled out for Newsnight was being optimistic about Kerry's chances, I wasn't quite prepared to wake up this morning to things looking so positive for Bush. Interestingly, the that very pollster was on the radio this morning as I came into work, pointing out to us all that this is an object lesson in why exit polls shouldn't always be trusted.
Gah. I say Gah!