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30th April You know how Sherlock Holmes never actually said "Elementary, my dear Watson"? Or how Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty"? We may have just seen the birth of another enduring myth. Despite what "School Reunion" implied, there never was a Doctor / Sarah Jane / K9 Tardis team. They never did travel together, until last night they never even appeared together on screen. So you are now armed with a little bit of trivia to drop into conversations on Tuesday morning. It may make you new friends, it may lose you old friends or it may just get scrunched up Post It notes hurled at your head. Not that RTD got it wrong - he knows what is what - he just let it be implied. So no one need be cross and call for his head upon a platter. He simply gave smug people of the world another reason to be smug and didn't let it get in the way of the story he wanted told. My only question is why the school blew up. I may have blinked and missed something but there didn't seem to be a reason (other than explosions being fantastic). Another great episode and nice to see Croydon getting a mention on prime time telly. More funds for Croydon (as Sue Perkins used to say, almost a decade ago, on Light Lunch). I've finally finished my Spooks
marathon. The final episode was a weird one - they had a slow,
tension-filled fifty minutes and then appeared to cram the second part of
a three-part epic into the last nine minutes. It is quite absurd how they
pieced together the plot, found the bomb, defused it and had some
meaningful character moments in such a short period of time. And then
stuck a cliff-hanger on at the end which made almost no sense. On top of
all that I've got to wait about four and a half months to find out who
And it's good to see that Chelsea have followed up their feat of destroying the English league by destroying England's World Cup hopes. Big props to the only club capable of being bitter in victory. You've given the cheaper newspapers the chance to dig out their cross sectional drawings of a foot and given everyone the "we didn't win because..." get out clause they've been hoping for. We're allowed to lose to foreigners if the excuse is good enough and you can't always guarantee that there will be an obviously incompetent referee. Generally there will be but its always better to have your excuse prepared before you even set foot on the pitch. Assuming some Chelsea fucker hasn't broken that foot of course. Anyone fancying some cheap magazines might like to click here. As long as you know how to cancel a Direct Debit you can get a bunch of stuff for a quid.
28th April Well bugger me. The very same person that I felt moved to look up last night having seen him in the Video Arts film only went and guested on HIGNFY this evening. Co-freaking-incidence or what? This weekend will see two titanic sporting clashes. The first, tomorrow morning, sees Chelsea and Manchester United fight it out for nothing at all. I fear it will all go horribly wrong and it will end up being a somewhat brutal defeat for the team in the vodafone shirts. The later clash - 1am on Monday morning to be exact - sees God meat Satan. Or at least the closest we'll (hopefully) ever see as Vincent Kennedy McMahon - insane former genius and honest-to-goodness asshole billionaire - teams with the product of his semen, Shane McMahon to battle Shawn Michaels and God. It is almost worth sitting through a show with no buzz about it just to see how in the name of heck they will get themselves out of booking God in a mid-card tag team match. If it is just a bit of pyro and some smoke then they've finally lost their tenuous grip on reality. People will be expecting nothing less than the real thing for $34.95. I suppose they've always got the backup plan of Hulk Hogan - he thinks he's got and a few people believe him. But I doubt they'll go down that route - Vince no doubt wants to make God tap out and Hogan doesn't job for anyone. Imagine that - this Sunday the almighty submits, next Sunday thousands of impressionable teenagers are thrown out of church for shouting "You tapped out!" during a big prayer. Speaking of huge entities which control human thoughts, feelings and behaviours, you will remember the Tesco Tales of two days ago. Scroll down if you don't. Have you done that? Splendid. Anyhoozle, I had an email from none other than MrsAussieGuy yesterday. Her version of the tainted meat story is a little different. I'll let her explain.
The dog box sounds rather full at the moment. Some of the lesser sinners will have to be sent to walk in the snow for a while. And finally, the big mystery of the moment is which female member of staff uttered the words "I'd shag [ITguy] for his brain". I had a strong suspicion but it proved to be wrong. Dangnabbit. I wanna know now. Then we can summon burley medical men to force her into either a straight-waistcoat or a chastity belt. Whichever would be most effective.
27th April The internet is truly a wonderful thing. We watched part of one of those John Otto Cleese "Video Arts" programmes during today's workshop. In addition to Jennifer Saunders and Jesse Birdsall there was someone else in it who looked familiar. Up until a few years ago you would either have had to (a) allow it to fester for the rest of your life, (b) befriend the trainer in the hope of being allowed to watch the rest of the video, or (c) put it to one side and accept that there are more things in heaven and earth (etc). Well, thanks to this here internet it has taken me five (f-i-v-e) minutes to not only find his name but also a photograph and discover where it was I'd seen him before. Result. I also found out that Video Arts charge a grand (plus VAT) for a copy of that video. Thirteen hundred (plus VAT) if you want it on DVD. Fuck a duck. I only paid thirty quid for Fawlty Towers and that's loads better. It's no wonder Cleese hasn't had to be funny in two decades. At the other end of the spectrum we have this showbiz story.
And, like a whore at a business conference, we've found ourselves passed round today. Every so often someone discovers Little Skaro, passes it on to everyone they know, posts a link on a board or two and lots of nice people visit to be amused. We even made it to the leading David Walliams fan-site today. Yay.
We've been enjoying AussieGuy's Tesco Tales this week. It all started with a microwave that was supposed to be silver. They got it home and MrsAussieGuy was undoing it (unboxing just looks wrong) when she noticed it was green. Not silver. So they put it back in the car and roared back to the 'sco. The assistant took a look at the opened box and concluded "yup - that's a green microwave all right". So they got another one, opened it up and it too was green. Not silver. By this point AussieGuy was ready to give them a flea in the ear. Box after box was green. Not silver. The manager was terribly apologetic and at a loss to know why all these silver microwaves were green. Not silver. It took a lone voice in the wilderness to suggest they might want to peel back the protective green layer of plastic before judging the microwaves to be green. Not silver. The film was peeled back and lo, the microwave was silver. Not green. We chuckled. The following weekend they were shopping and, not yet having realised how morally abhorrent it is, bought some dead animal flesh for their tea. They got the steaks home and, while AussieGuy was doing something technical with his seven computers, MrsAussieGuy noticed that they were out of date. In the words of the Beavis and Butthead episode, they were tainted meat. So they put it back in the bag and roared back to the 'sco. The shop was shutting - quite an achievement as it is a 24-hour store and only closes once a week. I picture him banging on the shutters, demanding that someone has a look at his meat. The security people said "no - we're closing", the customer service people said "no - we're closing" (but in a louder voice as they were further away). Our hero then put the entire staff of Tesco firmly in the dog box, demanded to see the manager and was rewarded with a cheery "Come inside and show me your meat." They went in to the slumbering store and the manager (a different one to the previous week) offered to replace their tainted produce without any fuss. He asked only the smallest thing in return - to be allowed to look upon the spoiled flesh. "That's not out of date" he noted and ground opened and swallowed our antipodean friend. Or rather he wished it did. An entire hyper market with nothing to do but stare at his embarrassed self. His other half did what every mortal being (save perhaps the brave Doctor Watson) would do and ran for the hills. We chuckled more. Today's e-me clip lets you pretend you are me and you've just received email. I dislike computer sounds - those clips that can be added for errors, crashes, disasters etc - but email notification is my one exception. I allow myself a snippet of Paul Temple and the Gilbert Case. That sound rightly excites me every time I hear it. "Ooh - stuff, stuff... nope just junk. Nuts." This is today's bizarre story of the day.
Never hire a lawyer who thinks "He added that he would spend most of his time cataloguing the images as opposed to looking at them. "It was the sort of gratification of a job well done," he said" is a convincing defence.
25th April In the same way that the website stats plunged to half their usual levels overnight (and stubbornly stayed at roughly that level for a fortnight), so they shot up today to around 150% of what was, at the start of this month, considered normal. There are no abnormal trends in the referrals (so I haven't made it to one of the more popular forums or listings) and the traffic pattern is normal throughout the day. Just higher. I don't know which makes me feel less confident - too few visitors or too many - because any deviation from normality is just weird. But, on balance, high is better than low. Who knows, it might even be real people who adore me for my shining brilliance.
I've found another of my favourite sound clips. This is going in the e-me too.
24th April You know those "Mr T In My Pocket" toys you can get - the ones with six or eight built in sounds which you can play just by pressing a button? I want one of those but with my own drops in it. But for now I'll have to make do with the new thing I figured out yesterday and use it to create the "e-me". Those that have worked with me will know I have an irritating catch phrase. In the absence of my own vibrant tones you'll have to make do with the original version of it instead, along with some of the other clips which might make up the "e-me".
You're all now thinking "Thank Christ I don't have to put up with that." You won't be the only ones.
23rd April I actually wasn't going to watch "Tooth and Claw" last evening. I had decided that it wasn't fair to watch and judge something having watched it at an arbitrary time rather than when I was in the mood for it. I can go days, or even weeks, without ever watching anything on television. I don't know if I'm terribly twenty first century or just a damaged mental head but I either can't or won't watch things when they're actually on. I'd rather wait and buy a series cheaply on DVD than sit down at the same time every week and stretch it over six or ten weeks. As for actually watching two or more things in an evening, well forget it. Friday night had a great line up - HIGNFY followed by classic Smith & Jones and then Ultimate Fighter. Nope - I managed HIGNFY but just recorded the rest. HIGNFY took me by surprise - I didn't even know it was back until Friday morning and a chance look at that bit of DigiGuide. Anyway, Tooth and Claw, I was going to record it and just sort of leave it until I could be arsed to watch it. But I couldn't because it was following football and football could overrun with extra time, penalties and Alan Hansen. Yes, I could've recorded the entire evening and simply edited away that which didn't please me. But there is Confidential to think of too. That follows straight after but on BBC3. So you need to either rely on timings or be there in person. What? I only said I had lost interest, I haven't lost my OCD. So I watched it - on time give or take - and it was great. You can say that the ending was a bit crap with the wolf somehow suspended in mid-air for several minutes before whisping away and the apparent disappearance of the killer monks simply because they were no longer needed in the story but they are faults I am more than happy to accept. I recently pointed out many of the logic holes in Invasion of the Dinosaurs but that doesn't stop it being an enormously fun story. I am nearly at an end of my Spooks marathon. I didn't intend to watch all four seasons when I set out but it has just sort of happened. I'm glad I'm nearly there as I'm getting perhaps a little bored of it. I accidentally saw a spoiler and know that the woman who replaced Zoë (rather blandly if I may say so) departs in my next episode. I'm pleased. She was the only one of the replacements who I never really warmed to. I like Adam and I like Zaf (and Anna Chancellor is always good value). I've decided that I'm going to tackle "I Clavdivs" next. I've tried to watch it all the way through twice before and always failed. But thanks to Boris Johnson's new book about Rome I'm thinking I might manage it this time. If I don't I might end up watching season two of Buck Rogers. It was a bargain at £9.97 in Music Zone (especially since the best online price is £22.99). I've always been interested in the second series because they threw out the entire format of season one and started anew with a blatant Battlestar Galactica clone. It flopped and the series was axed. I've never really seen it - though I must've seen bits because I have seen Hawk - and at that price I couldn't say no. An interesting rumour I saw at Wiki -
How good/bad/bizarre/boring/interesting/awful/tacky would that have been? And you'll have noticed I've finally outputted another music video. This one took ages - I tried two songs which really didn't work before finding one that did. I started out with two videos I wanted to do - the first was the Ninth Doctor "My Sacrifice" which I did, the second is either more complicated or is easier. I really don't know which. I've had several failures recently and has "Genesis of the Daleks" not eventually worked I would probably have given up for good. Though I still have a nicely camp "Inferno" one I want to do in June. Speaking of multimedia, back when I was all cross about the Thin Client fiasco (a word which has now become irretrievably ingrained into my day to day vocabulary thanks to ITguy) I used an MP3 to sum up how I felt. Two things to note about it - (a) it was only one of the drops I actually wanted to use but I couldn't find the others, and (b) the way I did it was rubbish. Well, I've found a much better way of using sound clips and so here it is, using the clip I wanted to use for some of the Thin Client fiasco decisions.
Multimedia rules.
19th April I realised something today about where we fit into the overall picture. If the business users are the public, the managers / supervisors are Jim Hacker, IT are the Civil Service and ITguy is Sir Humphrey then we of the Geek Clique must be Bernard Woolley. I also realised that people who think John Cena is a failure as champion because so many people boo him are missing the obvious point that Cena is basically WWE's version of Tito Ortiz. Tito is probably the biggest current UFC star. Some people love him, some people love to hate him. But whenever possible they pay to see him. Cena likewise is a draw. Traditionally the tweener (the guy who is neither an out-right good guy or an out-right bad guy but is a shade of grey and the fans decide whether to boo or cheer) isn't a successful guy to have on top. But with the fans going back and forth over Cena you have a dynamic fanbase - people boo him until he or they evolve to the point where he becomes cool to them, at which point others become bored of liking him so they turn on him. Unless you have the once in a lifetime guy (Hulk Hogan in the 80s or Steve Austin in the 90s) who can maintain his popularity for five years or more, everything has a shelf life. Cena's shelf life should be dramatically increased by his love/hate audience. I have a love/hate relationship with Lycos. Mostly hate these days. I forget the last time I loved them actually. About ten days ago their stats went down yet again. Since they came back we've been getting half the numbers we did before it all went bang. I don't mean half as many numbers - the numbers have been cut in half. I'm not above thinking that a whole bunch of people suddenly went "Oh for fucks sake..." and stumped off. But equally the timing and the suddenness of the drop makes me wonder if it is real or just another technical flaw. It is deeply irritating at any rate and, since it is the only source of fleeting self worth I get, that too has halved. Twelve out of fifteen is much more than half. That's what I got in the symptoms of depression section of the book I'm reading. It covers the fiddly diagnosis stuff in the first section before it gets onto the main point - the theory that Eicosapentaenoic acid (thanks Wiki) is a revolutionary natural cure. The only ones I didn't score myself high on were 5. Disturbed sleep patterns (because I don't wake up early - I sleep all together too much and have to be scooped from the slumber every morning) 9. Appetite changes (because no one would believe it because I eat way too much crap at work even if, at home, it can be well into the afternoon before I can be bothered to eat anything) 14. Psychotic symptoms (because they happen but not regularly). So the EPA theory is looking promising so far. The author either makes a good point when he says that there is a lot of rubbishing of EPA because it is a natural substance and therefore cannot be patented so the drug company stooges are against it, or he is being worryingly defensive from the outset. As if he feels the need to pre-empt criticism because the substance of his research doesn't hold up. Time will tell. It will also tell where Michael Ballack ends up. There is a story circulating that he's told Chelsea he will only join them if he is guaranteed a first team place. Since Chelsea can't honestly do that it will be interesting to see what happens. The story may be a crock of course. Or it could be him testing the water. Chelsea is a club which buys players on a whim. They want people because other teams want them. They have two or three internationals for every position. Ballack may be a great player but there are only a couple of midfield spots and Lampard has one of them. He would be much better off joining United. He really would be guaranteed a first time place there. It is a club with a long tradition of central midfield legends - Robson, Ince and Keane have ruled that midfield for two decades between them - and he would be a worthy addition to the list. But ultimately money talks and Chelsea will go that bit higher just because they can. I like to believe they are WCW in 1997. Yes, I like to believe that...
18th April ITguy is truly the King of Men. For he has placed in his diary a reminder for 31st May 2006. The diary note simply reads "Anniversary of the first central print". I wonder what he'll do at 8am when the reminder pops up. Will he drink a small glass of sparkling wine? Break a bottle over the enveloping machine? Kiss the developer sat next to him? Or just smile the confident smile of a man who has seen his vision become life? Maybe he'll have a party for those of us who were there to share the birth of history. The idea of an ITguy party makes me smile after hearing this exchange between ITguy, his ITColleague and TheArtist a couple of weeks ago. ITguy: You
can bring some common sense to the party It hardly seems like cricket to mention that, technically, the first central prints were the test packs we sent through a few weeks earlier ("Dear Mr Christ, We're sorry to hear of the death of your father, please find enclosed a claim form...") and the system didn't go live until the 1st of June. So any prints created on 31st May were either tardy tests or rogue elements. Neither of which should be celebrated with cakes, biscuits, candles, songs, bumps, buntings or jam. But it's the thought that counts. Of course, some of us don't need Outlook to remind us of that glorious time...
17th April Well, it's time to admit I know fuck all - less than a coin toss, less than guesses based purely on names, less than a bimbo in an Early Learning Centre. Spoilers follow - spoiler space kindly
provided by the makers of Spooks for those who don't want to know what
happened at the UFC show.
Let's cut to the chase - Andrei Arlovski Vs. Tim Sylvia Me - Arlovski TheArtist - Arlovski Result - Sylvia
Tito Ortiz Vs. Forrest Griffin Me - Ortiz TheArtist - Forrest Result - Ortiz
Nick Diaz Vs. Sean Sherk Me - Sherk TheArtist - Sherk Result - Sherk
Jeff Monson Vs. Marcio Cruz Me - Cruz. TheArtist - Monson Result - Monson
David Terrell Vs. Scott Smith Me - Terrell TheArtist -Terrell Result - Terrell
Karo Parisyan Vs. Nick Thompson Me - Parisyan TheArtist - Parisyan Result - Parisyan
Evan Tanner Vs. Justin Levens Me - Levens. TheArtist - Tanner Result - Tanner
So I lost. I got 4 out of 7 while m'colleague got 5. But the gap should've been wider as my immediate reaction to the judges giving the fight to Tito Ortiz was "Absolute bollocks". I actually did say that out loud. In the light of day - with several experts to explain it - it seems less unbelievable and more simply unfair but I still think Forrest Griffin won that fight. Not that it matters - he proved that he belongs in the light heavyweight elite. No longer just a kid who won a reality show - he's now a star who could fight Chuck Liddell without people fearing for his life. He makes out that he has no real skill but his takedown defence was largely excellent and he escaped from a couple of mount positions like he was made of rubber. The big shock of the night - which would've still been the big shock even if Forrest had been given the decision he deserved - was Tim Sylvia knocking out the unbeatable Andrei Arlovski. Even more remarkable was the fight itself - Arlovski rocked the 6'8" Sylvia with a punch, knocked him down and looked for all the world like he had won. But Sylvia survived and KOd the big Belarusian with a very short punch indeed. An unreal moment - the biggest upset the UFC has seen since... um... possibly since Randy Couture beat Chuck Liddell back at UFC 43. I don't know whether to be happy or sad that our world champion in Tim Sylvia. It sets up a rematch I suppose. And it might motivate Frank Mir to get in shape (if we're honest, Mir was half-assing it because he was scared of Arlovski). So it was a really good show. And now the countdown is on to UFC 60 - the return after more than a decade of Royce Gracie. He's going to get slaughtered by Matt Hughes... ...but what the fuck do I know?
16th April I have a headache. It's only to be expected and is probably overdue. I haven't got up before half past eleven since Thursday and if there is one thing which gives me a headache it is sleeping too much. But I like sleeping. I like not being awake. And every day that passes gets me nearer to the day when I don't wake up at all. I can't wait. I'm still watching Spooks. It's quite amazing really that it has held my attention for twenty four episodes. The last one I saw - the one with the rock star and his wife for those who saw it - was bollocks but the rest have been great. I think part of the reason "New Earth" left me so utterly neutral was that I'd been watching Spooks all afternoon and I couldn't change gears. Or "New Earth" didn't have Nicola Walker in it. Something like that. Thanks to eBay I have season 4 lined up to watch whenever I finish off these last two series three episodes. I've largely avoided spoilers except that I knew all along that the three series leads would all vanish before season 4. Today is spoiler-avoidance day. I had about twelve hours between getting up and starting to watch UFC. I absent minded went to F4W and saw the word "Arlovski" at the beginning of a sentence before hastily closing the tab. I don't think that counts as a spoiler. Someone online made a surprisingly good case for Sylvia winning the fight. They reminded us - and I think many people, including myself, needed reminding - that Andrei Arlovski's UFC career has consisted of fights against very poor opposition. When the best fighters on your résumé are Ian Freeman and Tim Sylvia you can't be put in the elite. The only flaw in this argument that Arlovski is overrated because he hasn't beaten anyone is that Tim Sylvia is one of the guys he beat so I don't quite get how it can be spun into a case for Sylvia winning. But the fight is done and dusted so I don't know why I'm talking about it. You may already know who won. And if you don't then chances are you don't care. Shut up, me. This is an interesting story. I don't know how true it is nationally but at least someone is actually saying 'lets do something before the election'. Few things irritate me more than politicians and activists campaigning against the BNP after an election. If someone gets elected then they have the right to speak and act as an elected representative. If you don't like them, campaign against them and convince the voters to vote for you rather than them. Anyone who tries to blindly demonise the BNP (and UKIP, the Tories, Labour - anyone you disagree with) is no better than the BNP trying to blindly demonise immigrants. So let's hope Margaret Hodge practises what she preaches and doesn't simply retreat back to a lazy and counter-productive "they're nazis - booooooo" position.
15th April I'm glad I have a condition which makes it almost impossible for me to ever go anywhere or do anything because if I'd stayed in specifically to watch "New Earth" I would've regretted it. It wasn't that it was so terribly bad, just that it ended with me feeling that if I'd sort of half watched it while reading a book or had wandered off for twenty minutes in the middle and come back with a distracting pizza I would've enjoyed it more. It registered exactly zero on the -5 to +5 scale.
14th April I think "The Ultimate Fighter" may be the only "reality" series which ever stepped beyond the realms of the utterly banal, pointless and flawed. The format is pretty simple - take 16 fighters and 2 coaches, split them into teams and every week one guy from the first team fights one guy from the second team and the loser is eliminated. No flood of telephone calls from horny girls or horny guys with more fifty pences than sense. No judges trying to get themselves over by humiliating those naive enough to fall for the idea that they could become famous. No sitting round doing absolutely nothing until a random "challenge" is thrown in to break up the monotony. I have the first two seasons of TUF on DVD but never watched them because I already knew who won. This third season is different because the nice people at Bravo have worked with the nice people at SpikeTV to get TUF on our screens the day after it airs in the states. Yes, some of the guys are dick heads. Of course they are. You can't seriously expect to find sixteen young jocks in their twenties who aren't dick heads. America isn't that big a country. But they are all (for the most part) sensible enough to be dick heads in their own time and to be serious in the gym. Which just goes to prove there is good sense in the old idea that most young offenders simply need something more productive to do with their time than causing trouble. But we can have the national service discussion another time. This season's big gimmick is that the two coaches hate each other. Tito Ortiz - jerk - and Ken Shamrock - old time hero - have had a long standing feud which goes back to Tito disrespecting Shamrock's "Lions Den" training camp and came to a head when Tito spent several rounds beating the crap out of Ken at UFC 40. A show which was quite possibly the beginning of UFC's revival after a long period in the wilderness. Ortiz has been the revelation of the season so far. Everyone knew he was a jerk, a prick, an asshole and a prima donna. Except, he isn't. He just pretends to be because it sells tickets. Here he comes across as a nice guy, an excellent coach and someone who really cares for the members of his team. Ken Shamrock doesn't exactly come off badly - he too cares but in a more remote way - he just seems out of touch. The reality of Ken Shamrock is that he beat a bunch of guys who weren't as skilled as him in the early days of UFC (when there was Royce Gracie above everyone, Shamrock and Dan Severn as the top Americans and everyone else was nowhere). You have to go back many many years to find the last time Shamrock beat anyone of any quality. No - Kimo Leopoldo doesn't count. The two coaches will fight in the Octagon in July and Tito will destroy Shamrock. But with the TUF battle being fought between young up and coming fighters it is far less predictable. So it is a good show, each episode has a purpose and builds to a decisive moment. The people on it will earn their success and their winning or losing won't be in the hands of the editors, the tabloids, the gullible, the hormonal or the spiteful. 10pm Fridays on Bravo (repeats scattered through the weekend).
13th April
So wrote ITguy many years ago in a publication now archived online. I once quoted this in the Project Room and he saw fit to open the door at some point during the scarcely common phrase "large plastic shoe". If he recognised the anecdote he no-sold it completely. "Large plastic shoe" has become an unofficial code word for an occasion when he walks in or wanders over or otherwise observes our discussions about him. Witness the time ShirtGuy sent me an email saying "It's dress down day - what is [ITguy] wearing?" and he happened to choose that moment while it was displayed in all its unopened, auto-previewed glory to borrow my Outlook and check his calendar. It happened again today - I spelled out the URL for the website upon which the large plastic shoe story is archived and TheArtist wrote it down on a postit note. Some time later he jotted down the details of a query brought to him by a peep and went over to see ITguy. It was only as he brandished the postit note that he realised what else was on it. He says he put a hasty thumb over the address but nothing gets past ITguy. He sees everything. But no-sells it. My UFC predictions are running at about 50% accuracy this year which basically means I could've tossed coins and scored as highly. So I thought I'd try a little experiment. I, with my questionable skill and judgement, will do some predicting for this weekend's UFC 59 - "Reality Check" - and compare my results with those of someone who has (to the best of my knowledge) never seen a fight and knows none of these people. I should get more right than TheArtist shouldn't I? We'll know by early Monday morning. Andrei Arlovski Vs. Tim Sylvia I say - Arlovski will win this easily. He is awesome and Tim Sylvia isn't. Unless Fedor (or a CroCop on the back of a couple of good wins) is standing across the cage I wouldn't back anyone against Arlovski. TheArtist says - Andrei Arlovski in an easy win - Sylvia is a girls name.
Tito Ortiz Vs. Forrest Griffin I say - The thing about Tito Ortiz is that I've never seen him look good against a decent opponent. He looked strong against Shamrock but that was (a) a few years ago and (b) against Ken Shamrock. His only losses have come against Couture and Liddell - two of the all time greats - and much as I'd like Forrest Griffin to win I think Tito will win a unanimous decision. TheArtist says - Forrest Gump to win - this 'nam war vet has already displayed a fierce survival instinct, even if he is a dumb ass.
Nick Diaz Vs. Sean Sherk I say - Nick Diaz struggled against Joe Riggs, Sean Sherk was thought to be a serious threat to Georges St Pierre. Sherk is short and thick and I don't think Diaz has what it takes to get through Sherk's armour. TheArtist says - Sean Shark to show us how to ultimate fight - he's top of the food chain.
Jeff Monson Vs. Marcio Cruz I say - Cruz surprised everyone by beating Frank Mir in what should've been Mir's warm up fight for a title shot. But he's had exactly two fights and Monson should beat him out of sheer experience. Cruz has a hell of a rep on paper - six time jui jitsu champion - and if he's for real he's just what the UFC heavyweight division needs. I'm torn but I'm going with Cruz. TheArtist says - Jeff Monsoon - his reign
(get it - rain?) will continue in this whirlwind
David Terrell Vs. Scott Smith I say - I know nothing of Scott Smith as he's making his debut. David Terrell on the other hand knocked Matt Lindland out in 25 seconds at UFC 49 and anyone who spares me having to watch yet another godawful Matt Lindland fight is ok in my book. TheArtist says - David Terrell to win - mess with Terrell at you peril (getting desperate)
Karo Parisyan Vs. Nick Thompson I say - Karo Parisyan is in contention for a welterweight title shot, Nick Thompson's nickname is "The Goat". TheArtist
says - Karo Parisyan to triumph - They say that Paris is one of the
romantic places in the World. There won't be much romance in this blood
bath. Karo to Nick
Evan Tanner Vs. Justin Levens I say - Tanner's speciality is getting punched in the face. I'm going with the unknown quantity, Levens. TheArtist says - Evan Tanner - The only even thing about this fight will be his name, so put a tenner on tanner.
So, out of seven fights we differ on only three. That at least guarantees (I think) that it can't end in a tie.
12th April The reality of a long weekend coming up had quite blinded me as to the reason for it. It's Easter and that means chocolate eggs. Not for me - for m'lil nephew. So I called at Tesco on the way home to get one. HalfPastThree had shown wisdom in advising I get Smarties. His reasoning was that they don't melt. Five year olds like holding things - especially things that become messy - so avoiding that is a good idea. Sidebar, about a week ago TheArtist was working quietly when he suddenly exclaimed "Oh fuck!". "What is it?" I asked, untrained in matters of first aid and counselling but keen to gather material for this journal. "I told my mum to get me a Buttons Easter egg and that was the wrong thing to do" he replied. Tesco looked unnaturally busy from the outside but inside it was the same randomly slow, strange and stupid people one meets absolutely every time one ever goes out in public. The Easter egg isle was the busiest of the lot but I'm not easily put off. With my basket vs their trolleys I had mobility on my side and I weaved my way through like Indiana Jones doing some of his dangerous adventuring. It was then that I discovered that Tesco are crap. I mean really crap. Where were the fucking Easter eggs? Oh they had lots of them but there was no choice. There didn't seem to be any made by Nestle or Mars. It was all Cadburys very ordinary. My choice was limited to three (THREE) different kinds. Cadbury's Dairy Milk (oooh - let's get a milk chocolate egg with two small bars of milk chocolate. Excitement), Cadbury's Caramel and Fruit'n'Nut. There were some cartoony ones but the only non-girlie one was Chicken Little and Mother had already got one of those for him. It was absurd. The place didn't look like it had been hit by a wave of demand and all that was left were the dregs. This was just drabness. Maybe it is a corporate plot to make us realise that the supermarket ideal of a dozen choices for every item is the way forward. "Ah ha" they'll say, "you said you didn't want choice so we're giving you no choice. Welcome to communist Russia, comrade, I hope you don't mind small children thinking you're rubbish." Ah well, he won't be the only one.
11th April Firefox allows us to take greater control of what we see and do online. I know there are those who don't see the need for it but, like wheels, the benefits become obvious once you try it. Blocking ads is great (for me at least - the ad companies will probably go to war once Firefox reaches the tipping point of popularity) but what if you could block other things? Since ezBoard lag behind their rivals in terms of cool features (which is probably because they've stopped developing the ez platform in favour of their new toy, Yuku) there is no "ignore" function. The ignore button is marvellous - you click it and anyone you don't like disappears from view. No more "Oh god I can't stand that little dickwit" misery. I found a Greasemonkey script which purported to offer a personal "Ignore" function but it doesn't like ezBoard. It isn't the only one. I've been through a few extensions and scripts looking for something which will work but the most I've achieved is the removal of an irritating scrolling text marquee. Mostly I do techie stuff for my own amusement but that thing had become stupidly annoying so I was glad to see the back of it.
9th April I've converted a couple of people into CNPS players. AngryDave and TheArtist now know the joys of squinting at number plates in the hope of taking another tiny step along an impossible road which has no prize at the end of it. But I want to warn any potential players that the game is absolutely not suitable for anyone who thinks that the universe only exists so an intelligent but malevolent entity can fuck with your mind. After a month of failure I had to go to the West Midlands to find a 141. Today, during two journeys of maybe 13 minutes each, I saw FOUR different 141s. I'm not given to quoting from the classics but I'm forced to opine "Can't you sense it Mel - evil - there's evil in this place." Naturally, the 142s which were as plentiful as gossip magazines with absolutely no value what so ever are now as rare as people who have beaten Fedor. Or as rare as places where you can get the new Kid Rock live album in this country. Amazon have it for £15 as an import with a two week wait, Play.com say it isn't available, CD WOW don't even admit it exists. I shouldn't care - his last album was a fiasco - a total change in sound which took the touches which made "Cocky" feel different but stripped away all the stuff that made "Cocky" great. He all but outed himself as a country and western singer whose previous half dozen albums were a sham to make him rich and famous so he could afford to churn out crap like the self-titled "Kid Rock". Now he's gone back to old school - a combination Greatest Hits and Live album which sounds good from the Amazon clips but which will only get a UK release after I've spent twice as much as a normal CD to import it. I have a bad feeling about this afternoon's game. I generally do but playing a resurgent Arsenal at a time when false optimism is building, and at 4pm on a Sunday (which I hate because by the time the game is over it has become Sunday evening and Monday morning looms) makes me really wish it wasn't happening. I'd much rather get these things out of the way on a Saturday morning. Both teams are capable of being great and of being terrible. If one side turns up and the other merely appears then it could be brutal. Like watching Kimo vs Dan Severn from Pride 1. Actually, the whole Pride show was brutal in one way or another. The aforementioned fight was indescribably boring as two ground guys tried (god knows why) to stand for twenty nine and half minutes. It finally burst into life with thirty seconds to go and was ruled a draw. I wish they could announce that both men lost. Elsewhere we had an illegal shin kick to a downed man which caused an egg to grow out of the guy's head. It sprang up instantly and was the biggest bump I think any of us have ever seen. There was a brutal knockout which showed how bad referees used to be in MMA - "Big" John McCarthy would've stopped the fight when the guy when down but this Japanese guy just stood there and let two more brutal punches be landed before he wandered over and stopped it. There was the Untrained Hour where two big guys who didn't know anything flapped about until one lucked into a poorly executed submission hold and the other guy tapped out of sheer panic. Finally, the always dangerous sight - a staple of Japanese fighting over the years - the world class MMA fighter verses the massively popular but hugely out-manned pro wrestler. It was an interesting show - not as crude as the first UFC but this was 1997 not 1993. But the hotch potch of rules and the freak show aspect of certain fighters means it was not the high quality MMA show they might've wanted people to believe. Mind you, Pride has never got over its freak show obsession as Fedor vs Zuluzinho showed last New Years Eve.
6th April I'm now able to update the intranet. I had a crash course from a perky blonde which just reiterated what I'd guess by looking at a document and comparing "live" with "editing". The formatting code is weird - she kept calling it HTML and I was left wanting to repeat something ITguy said to us back in 2004 (and which became a running gag) "Mmm - it's not HTML". It looks more like message board tags but even that is a flawed comparison as you open tags but rarely have to close them. The second weirdest thing is that the colour tag actually spells it "COLOUR" which is a first in this age of Microsoft English. But the weirdest thing is in table construction. Basically, for those not used to such things, in Word you press ENTER to move to the next line wheras in HTML you put a <br> tag. So to move from here to here either requires two ENTERs or a <br><br> to signfy two line breaks. You can't mix the two - either ENTER works or <br> works. And if you're using tags the ENTER key merely exists as a way of organising your code and has no effect on the published document. With me? Well, this intranet thing doesn't obey that rule. The ENTER key does things and so do tags. It is weird. Because the perky blonde didn't seem the sharpest apple in the orchard I didn't ask her to run through tables. Instead I spent an afternoon trying and erroring before I finally got something workable. But - what larks - it turns out that when she said "Just email me when you're finished and I'll publish it" she actually meant "Every time you save the page it is published automatically". So it is only the fact that no one reads the intranet which stopped them having a chucklesome afternoon watching the evolution of my page update. Our intranet is a hugely wasted resource - the people would never even think of looking at it, the content is out of date, the navigational structure is laughable (even worse than this site) and the pages are ugly as a rule. Naturally, there is fuck all I can do about that but at least I can now add Intranet Maestro to Web Maestro and "twice had an email read out on the Mel and Sue Show" on my e-CV. I'm going to Coventry tomorrow. I haven't been there for about three years. Here is an aerial photo - I never actually saw it from there air when I live there but it all looks nicely familiar. It probably doesn't mean anything to any of you (with the possible exception of Mr H) but they were interesting times. All I need to do before they get there is prepare everything and decide whether to go up or down the glass escalator first.
1st April You know those big pies? The long ones with egg all the way through them? If you don't, imagine three feet of boiled egg, pigs flesh and pastry. We found out this week that HalfPastThree once inadvertently stole one of these enormous pies. It's almost like a story from the autobiography of Ian Devine but this is real life. He worked at the factory, was told it was all taken care of and only realised when the security guard was helping him carry it across the car park that "taken care of" was a euphemism for "blind eyes have been turned". So he's a pie thief and we should taken every opportunity to brand him so. "Pie thief... pie thief... pie thief" That literally never gets old. At least he won't be there tomorrow morning. M'self and the rest of the gang will be enjoying Sunday morning overtime. No one is quite sure why it is a Sunday and not the usual Saturday. It was suggested that the business asked for it because they needed Saturday overtime for their people but that would require a degree of forward planning and communication not yet seen from management. My guess is some kind of other non-us upgrade was happening today. I know we'll arrive tomorrow and meet our new Thin Client terminals. So that should be fun. In a move which defies the laws of sanity, we were told on Friday afternoon that we would be getting these new machines for Monday morning. Passwords would be emailed either late on Friday or early on Monday. Yes - the password needed to log on to the machine would potentially be emailed AFTER the machine was installed. TheArtist will face this problem as he wasn't in on Friday so he'll need to find an old machine to log into just so he can get the incantation necessary to log into the new machine. So we'll have a fun morning because nothing will work and no one will be there to do anything. At least our release is fine. That's to say it has bugs and glitches and doesn't do what it was supposed to do but that's the fault of the actuaries. Strange, pale people who have an aversion to daylight, personal contact and speaking anything other than the brusque language of numbers. The language of numbers can however tell us some interesting things. Such as it being April already and Chelsea's March Premiership win hasn't happened yet. No one is naive enough to think it won't happen but seven points isn't the landslide they had a couple of weeks ago. United finishing strongly and getting as close as possible could be a double edged sword. On the one hand it sends out a message to everyone (including potential targets) that the next Fergie side is coming together and with a couple of new faces and another year of experience under certain belts they will be a force to be reckoned with. On the other hand it will simply provoke Chelsea into spending more of their owner's economic-rape money on yet more big names. But big names aren't always handled in a predictable way. For months it has been known that Tito Ortiz vs Forrest Griffin was the main event of the April UFC show. But over the past couple of weeks that fight has been pushed down into second place behind Andrei Arlovski's world title defence against an over matched Tim Sylvia. Of course titles are important but to the casual viewer Tito and Forrest are far bigger names than Arlovski and Sylvia. The idea of putting the title in the headline spot makes very little sense. Especially since Sylvia tapped in 45 seconds the last time he fought Arlovski. Do UFC really want to piss their fans off with another sub-minute Arlovski defence in the main event? Until they can get a credible opponent, Andrei Arlovski should be kept away from the main events because the guys he's beating make him less and less of a champion every time. I believe Fedor's brother is out of contract soon - they should sign him. Alexander may not be in his brother's league but at least we can all die having seen one Arlovski vs Emilianenko fight. We will also be able to say we saw Joking Apart released on DVD in our lifetimes. Steven Moffat is a ridiculously good writer with the best comedy/drama ever made for children (Press Gang), the best episode of New Doctor Who (The Empty Child), the best sit com of the 21st century (Coupling) and probably the best prime time BBC1 sit com that no one liked even though it was haemorrhagingly funny (Chalk). Well, the best thing he ever wrote is the obscure BBC2 comedy Joking Apart and thanks to the work of one man it is coming out on DVD. It won't be available in shops - only online at Replay DVD's site - but you owe it to yourselves to buy it. Then maybe the second series will come out. And maybe one day even Chalk will come out on shiny disc. Because Chalk - in addition to having some of the best farce-plots ever written - also brought Nicola Walker to television. I'm working my way through Spooks at the moment and I've reached the point in series two where she joins the cast. Apparently she (in real life) met her husband while making the series. Thereby putting paid to the rumours that have circulated ever since she and Sue Perkins got famous at more or less the same time and it came out that they were living together. Spooks is so good. I only bought the DVDs because they were cheap and only started watching (after a long time gathering dust) because I'd run out of Hustle and wanted something equally slick. I've heard good things about Life on Mars, I know how good The New Series was - have we suddenly entered an age of really good British television without anyone actually noticing?
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