Entries made in February 2006

“Life in Slow Motion... that’s his music down to a T, isn’t it?”

Friends of mine will know that I have a special place in my heart for the music of David Gray; a place which is cold and vicious. I can tolerate his music in the background, when it is indistinct and muffled; but once I find out that it’s him, when I hear his grating, shallow voice I just have to escape.

So imagine my joy today when my two great loves of David Gray and comment spam combined to produce David Gray comment spam.

Blog title courtesy of Phil.

The heart, lungs and liver of a sheep, boiled in its own stomach...

...is damn tasty. Haggis, a national dish of Scotland, tastes great. The best thing about it is that people find the description quite revolting, so more for Dave.

Conservative love-off

I followed a link from Airbag to an article about wines at a White House dinner.

While I was thinking “Why the heck is this supposed to be funny?” I noticed something in the sidebar. You know when a new piece of information enters your head and it confuses you, so your brain instantly goes to work - looking at it from a few different angles, trying to figure it out - only to realise that you’ve just picked up a live mental hand-grenade and you need to get it out of your mind as quickly as possible?

I don’t think mere words can truly describe the horror, so here’s what I saw:

Can you see it? Yes, that is one awful drop shadow. Of course, then I looked to the left and for a moment I thought I heard my own mind scream right back.

My strong morbid curiosity compelled me to check this out. So I went to Conservative Match.com and had a look. Once I saw their fantastic slogan, “Sweethearts, not bleeding hearts”, I knew I wanted to do a parody site.

So I started to looking around for things to change. It was then, that I saw the dinner-party photo:

On the surface, it looks like some couples are having a nice, pleasant evening in. But look closely at the photo. There are five people in it: two white women, two white men and one black man. There can only be two couples here, and I’m pretty sure the black man is the odd-one-out. Here's why:

• The black man has hair too cool for a conservative.
• Most of the white people have positioned themselves to put the table between them and the black man.
• The black man is serving food for the white people.
• The white man immediately behind the black man is staring right at him. If I’m not mistaken, his expression reads “I’ve got my eye on you, darkie!”.

This is far funnier than if I’d just replaced the turkey with a baby.

These ads make me want to pirate movies

I bought two DVDs today, The Fantastic Four (yeah, that was a mistake) and Batman Begins.

I pop in the main DVD of Batman Begins, and so am presented with a menu listing several countries, starting with Australia. I skip through to the third or fourth page, find Ireland, and select it.

One of those terrible anti-piracy ads stars to play. I’m forced to sit through it as I’m told, through terrible analogy, piracy is bad don't pirate lol. Finally, an Irish copyright protection agency’s number pops onto the screen.

I’m a wee bit annoyed at being forced to take an action to choose the most effective way of being talked down to, but I do think these ads are counter-productive. The electronic music, the fast cuts, the fact that the guy who steals the handbag seems to be wearing a suit; associating these things with piracy only makes me think piracy is cool.

It’s like the conservative attempt at humour... dull, derivative and dumb. More on conservatives in tomorrow.

Don’t look sharp, look wonky

I've mucked around with the stylesheet here to piss Des off. Hopefully it works.

If you're using Internet Explorer, and you can actually read this... well, that’s got to be a miracle. It would certainly be a shock to me!

Steve’s Birthday Bash!

The continued adventures of Steve the Potato.

A test of video

Hopefully more to come today (if YouTube stops acting the spa). Update: It has, moved video to YouTube.

Oooh-laaa!

The steamer began to move slowly away, but on the land-ward horizon appeared the silhouette of a fighting machine. Another came, and another; striding over hills and trees, plunging far out to sea and blocking the exit of the steamer. Between them lay the silent grey ironclad “Thunder Child”. Slowly it moved towards shore, then with a deafening roar and a woosh of spray, it swung about and drove at full speed towards the waiting martians.

Links for the first of February

A horrific and barbaric act of cruelty, courtesy of Conall Mahon. I cannot stress this enough: do not watch this if you have a weak stomach. An animal is skinned alive. How much effort would it take to just kill it?

Pep Bonet's work, amazing photography from Africa.

Interview with Jon Snow, and Strings attached: The Kabbalah Centre exposed, at David Rowan's site.

Mike Davidson on the roundabout SEO test.