I have given up on political blogging for the moment since I can rarely express myself properly in the medium without getting confused, repeating myself and sounding like an idiot in retrospect. This may have something to do with the fact that I often blog politics when I am drunk. I also hate the whole political blogging scene; smug Ann Coulter wannabes pontificating to fawning disciples and repeating the latest William F Buckley columns, tedious self-proclaimed “liberals” posting the latest email forwarded joke about Bush and telling me how great Dean is. Newsflash. I’m not American, I don’t care about your factionalised bullshit and I’m not going to wave the flag for the latest Great White Hope just because he’s a Democrat. Don’t get me started on my perceptions of the Democrats.

As some of you will know, I am the moderator on a UK board that is often political, and most of my posts are in response to a few particular posters who are conservative North Americans – there are few conservatives from other areas. It’s not like there are no relevant and intelligent comments made by anyone else, but what is the point in going to a bulletin board merely to say “I agree”? That’s just backslapping. My back is big and hairy enough to require no further slapping right now. But if I was to start commenting on any of these rightbloggers I would undoubtedly have my comments deleted, or face a tirade of angry incoherent Fox Newshounds, and to be honest I have better and more productive things to do.

Anyway, the important questions facing the world today are:

1. What is the difference between Gatorade Ice and Gatorade Frost?
2. Are these insects outside my house cicadas, or something else? Is a cicada a type of cricket? I’ve been told these are crickets, but I don’t trust the nature skills of anyone who grows up in this area. I’ve been telling people about the huge asteroid crater I discovered a mile away from my apartment and they were all unaware of it, so I’ve come to the conclusion that the natural environment is not a high priority. One of these days I will record the crickets on an audio blog post and let you decide.
3. I have unilaterally decided to migrate the intranet site I single-handedly design and maintain at work to a Unix server that will not handle Perl, but will do JSP. (Web design is voodoo here, like every other piece of computer technology. You really have not experienced a less geeky or even technologically-aware set of programmers, and it’s company-wide. I’m treated as a black magician because I can pipe Unix commands to each other.) Was this a good move? Bonus points for “MICRO$OFT SUX0R” references, since it used to be hosted on some sort of Windows server and I always like stuff that confirms my prejudices and tells me I’ve done the right thing.
4. Why is it that Americans only want to use horrible flip-top Motorola phones? Can they not see how appalling they look?
5. If you wish to end a relationship, is it really bad not to do it face-to-face? “Yes” is the prevailing answer, but I can see many occasions where that might be hazardous. If your soon-to-be-ex is likely to cause a scene or physically assault you, I would say that maintaining a healthy distance is a good idea. The telephone is not in the “impersonal” category any more; if you can have whole romances over the phone, dumping someone using that medium seems acceptable as well. Text messages might be considered a little brief, though. Note to any past and future exes: this is nothing to do with you, this is a theoretical question only. This is more of a Eurotrash topic, I would have said, since I am a Repressed English Public-School Crypto-Homosexual™ and therefore should not talk about these things.

(I would like to add that the REPSCH thing is entirely my own invention and nothing to do with Eurotrash.)

I wrote a while back about Blogchangebot, an AIM service that you can find an icon for on the front page.

Dan, who writes Unpossible, has produced a service called Instant Gratification (or is it Blogtraffic? I’m not sure) that works the other way round – at least the principle is reversed. Instead of notifying you when someone else’s blog has been updated, it notifies you when someone reads yours. I’m not really on AIM a lot but you might want to check this out.

Grandstanding homophobic judicial cunt Chief Justice Roy Moore’s statue has finally been removed.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – A 2 1/2-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments that became a lightning rod in a legal storm over church and state was wheeled from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building Wednesday as protesters knelt, prayed and chanted, “Put it back!”

Well, you know, anyone who wheels in a multi-ton piece of rock in the middle of the night, against the wishes of the other judges in the area, and leaves it there is asking for trouble in the first place. It could be a giant statue of Hello Kitty and it would still be a damnable cheek. Let alone an ugly block with not only the Ten Commandments but also lots of lovely little quotes about God on it. That’s before you get to the legal issues.

But what’s this? CNN – USA Today – Gallup poll indicates that 80% of Americans are morons?

Only one in five Americans approve of the federal court order under which workers removed the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of Alabama’s state judicial building Wednesday, according to a new poll.

Well, for the sake of my own sanity I choose to believe that this poll was taken under very unusual i.e. biased circumstances – either that, or there are a lot of people who defend the concept of states’ rights regardless and view this as the Fedral Guvmint interfering, regardless of the fact that the state wanted it removed too. Because I don’t like looking around me and thinking four out of five people around me are complete fucking idiots. Lalala, I can’t hear you, CNN.

The alternative to them being idiots is them being dangerous supporters of a theocratic USA and that’s really not something I want to consider either.

It’s not only perfectly done, it also summarises the issues incredibly well. And, frankly, Apple needs to have the boot put into “not utterly stupid like all the others but still perpetuates the music industry system” iTunes Music Store.

iTunes iSbogus

Some great links from there too, including RIAA Radar.

First off, stupid link of the day (via Mordant Carnival): Straight Pride clothing. Morons. Morons who need a good hot Homosexual Agenda rammed down their throats.

What gets me is how these sites always say “hey, this isn’t Politically Correct“. Yes it is! What could be more politically correct, seeing as how the damn President agrees with you? Dude, I’m so rebellious, I’m daring to conform to the overwhelming prejudices of society!

Ms Carnival goes to much greater lengths than I shall on this issue. Straight Pride is about as sensible as White Pride. Hey, why don’t we have White History Month? There’s somehow a shortage of white history being taught? Oh, to hell with it, if this all needs explaining, fuck off and stop reading my blog because I’m tired of explaining the most obvious stuff to morons. Christ, even if you disagree, you should at least have better arguments than “these gays are just showing off, there’s no real prejudice any more”. I mean, for fuck’s sake, the existence of Will And Grace doesn’t really mean much in practice, any more than The Cosby Show was the end of racism.

Oh, and Donald Rumsfeld is still the irritating propaganda-spouting bastard that he always has been.

America did not ask for this war, he said, “but it is a war we have to fight and we have to win, because there is no safe, easy middle ground. Either we take the war to the terrorists and fight them where they are — at this moment, to be sure, in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere — or at some point we will have to fight them here at home.”

The man knows quite clearly that whenever anyone says the word “terrorist” it carries associations with 9-11. This is just the usual concept grouping for dummies. If challenged he could say “I’m merely referring to the Iraqi terrorists who attack American soldiers and the UN” but we all know what he’s trying to say, Saddam Blew Up The WTC So We’re Kicking Ass. Think of the jumpers. Think of the firemen. Let us do what we want.

This all sounds so trite, I’ve said it so many times, but I can’t help it, they’re still using the same crap over and over again and they still get away with it.

I’ve been pretty active at work today, with the usual big slice of cynicism but also some actual challenge and exercise of the brain, which makes me feel a bit better. However, I still have plenty of bile and melancholic humour and shouting into the void is either a symptom, a catharsis or both.

Let’s have another one. Zoloft Helps Depression in Kids. Well, no – study after study has indicated that actually, SSRIs don’t work very well on kids, even those with major depression; this one shows a slight efficacy benefit, but why take this one out of context of all the other studies? Is it somehow a better study? No. It’s just positive rather than “supportive”. Do enough studies and eventually, something will come out looking good, and the idea that Zoloft is different from all the other SSRIs so other research is irrelevant is laughable.

Screw it, I’m not really in the mood for this.

I’ve been degaussing my monitor. BOOIIinnng……. click. BOOIIinnng……. click. There is a reason for this in that the text appears to be going in and out of focus, which is a bit disturbing and makes me feel my eyes are going funny – they are a bit peculiar, but having looked at other people’s monitors I don’t think it’s my fault.

When was the last time you degaussed your monitor? Don’t you think you should do it right now? The increasing number of LCD panels being sold means future generations may be denied the pleasures of degaussing. Remember, the longer you wait before degaussing, the better the BOING. It’s one of those delayed-gratification things.

I have no idea what degaussing actually does, and while I could find out in seconds I really don’t want to. I like to maintain some childlike wonder at the world. I just want the degaussing button to the one that goes BOOIIinnng……. click, and makes the screen all twist up for a bit. Alongside the 76 from the city to King Of Prussia, there are several very tall masts, or towers, or skinny vertical structures of some kind, must be half a mile high at least, with red or green lights all the way to the top. I’m sure there is a very simple explanation for the existence of these things but I don’t want to know what it is. I just like to look at them at night, that’s all I want from them.

I watched Snake In The Eagle’s Shadow yesterday, and that’s some top kung fu, with a soundtrack that mixes 70s sci-fi film and sprightly Hong Kong cheese. Not only that but it has some superb facial hair and Mr Chan quite obviously gets his front teeth knocked out in the final scene which makes him look even more goofy. (For a man who is actually very handsome, he’s very good at looking like an absolute clown.) Slightly disturbed by the idea that they may have actually got a cat to fight a cobra though. I assume, the cat being a significant minor character, they had some sort of de-fanged cobra, but I would prefer it if there had been no cat/cobra antics at all.

audblog audio post

Yuh, bandwagonesque. But it is pretty cute, and cheap, too (free in this case, it’s a free trial). Now I have another way to use my phone to blog. And you get to hear my horrid nasal voice.

The site is at www.audblog.com, and it supports pretty much every type of blog, including Livejournal. I had to install RSD support to use this with Movable Type, which I didn’t know anything about before (it’s not hard, it’s just another tiny XML template to generate).

Okay, I was pretty drunk last night. I’ve just checked, and I don’t seem to have insulted anyone particularly badly (that I can find) or broken anything… but I did cook something really weird and put it in the fridge.

What the hell is this?

No way am I touching it now. Maybe later, when the stomach is a bit more settled. It’s yellow and it has rice, pak choi, onion and tofu in it, but who knows what else I put in? The yellow is turmeric I think, but there was also some sweet chilli sauce… I have some odd stuff in my cupboard, and I’m not risking it. Oh hell, here are two pictures of my cupboard:

Cupboard

More cupboard

I was going to eat it for dinner, but in the end all I had was vegetable chips and beef jerky all afternoon/evening. And twelve beers. And two Bloody Marys, I think. That will have kept the calorie count up. About thirty cigarettes too, not actually ingested since that would have killed me.

Being drunk on the net is a bit self-limiting since if you get to the stage where you start random fights, you lose the ability to type, and even when drunk I am far too much of a snob to allow myself to make spelling mistakes. I’m told that it can be quite difficult to tell when I am drunk. Obviously if I’m falling off my chair I’m probably either drunk or someone has coated my arse with teflon again, but I’ve conducted quite intelligent-sounding conversations after two bottles of wine. This isn’t so much high tolerance as a stereotypically “English” fear of losing face and control. The idea of the English being emotionally repressed that the world takes such delight in is mostly utter bollocks but it is true on occasion (I am such an ambassador for my country – public school, emotionally repressed, talks posh, drinks too much… if only I could avoid that shaved head thing I’d fulfil every lazy foreigner’s dream).

For some reason I disconnected my iBook and took it into the bedroom, as if I was going to write something, but obviously I didn’t (being unable to type) so all I did was leave it sitting there and let the battery run down. I think that’s good for it occasionally.

Well, it’s not like I have anything to do today anyway. I was actually planning to spend yesterday not getting drunk, and maybe take my iBook down to the Starbucks or into the garden to do some writing for a change. I didn’t; I spent the morning panicking, then I went out around midday to get some supplies, spent a lot of money on CDs and DVDs, and came home because I couldn’t stand the heat. That effort tired me out so much that I couldn’t bear to go out again, or maybe it was agoraphobia kicking in. I’d picked up some free listings papers to see whether there were any gigs going on I could see today, but I can already hear the crickets and see the sunshine and I’m thinking “heatstroke”, “much too bright” and “will collapse and flop around like a kipper”.

I’m surprised to find that the coffee that I just made, sitting here in my Meteor Crater mug, is possibly the best-tasting that’s ever come out of my shitty little coffee machine. (It’s decaff, which makes this even more surprising.) I make coffee by trial and error. I don’t measure out the quantities, I just shake some from the coffee container into the filter and see what happens. Mostly what happens is that I end up with brownish water or spoon-dissolver, but amazingly, this time it has worked. The logic of pouring acidic bean juice into a sensitised bag of flesh – my stomach, in case that wasn’t clear, I’m not sure at this time of the morning whether my metaphors are going to hit their targets – may be faulty, but it tastes great.

Handsome Boy Modeling School / “Sunshine”

I wonder if I spend the entire day tomorrow drunk, will I feel better? I mean, Bloody Mary for breakfast, moving on from there.

It seems to have served many famous people well.

In other news, all people on internet discussion boards suck, unless they agree with me. You don’t know the shit that we moderators go through.

I switched on Fox News, for complex reasons, and I couldn’t help but shout “CUNT” at the TV when the President came on. Is this avoidable?

Oh dear, they’re starting on some fuckwitted commentary on the ELF SUV-burning event. I’m not sure I can stand this. No, I have to wait to see what they say about the Ten Commandments monument. I don’t think I can bear their Israel commentary though.

Christ. They’ve just said “fair and balanced”.

Oh dear. They’re trying to defend the Ten Commandments rock being retained because it’s structurally unsafe to move it. I can’t watch this shit any more, I’m sorry, the entire channel is a pisstake. “Acts of patriotism are against airline property”….