Via Rob Buckley‘s blog, the argument in favour of raising Carbon Dioxide emissions. Or not reducing them, anyway. You’ve got to wonder if this is a fake or not… Although the link given on the YouTube site seems to indicate that its fo’ real. Worrying.
Category Archives: Current affairs
Dogma vs. The Da Vinci Code
Don’t know why people didn’t raise the same fuss over Dogma – it’s got to challenge at least as many of the same institutional ‘truths’ – I guess maybe people don’t take Kevin Smith as seriously as they take Dan Brown, which makes me sad with the universe. Kevin Smith is a genius.
And yes, I am watching E4 tonight…
Eurovision
So, watched the Eurovision song contest tonight with some friends from college; its a tradition of theirs I’ve never fully embraced, but really enjoyed tonight. Suzanne and Jamie hosted an entertaining evening, and there were two things in particular that snagged my interest.
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(1) Terry Wogan is hysterically funny. His sarcastic deconstruction of Europe really made me chuckle: “this is a kiosk… why its not like kiosks in other countries I can’t say… oh yes, I know stuff…” — paraphrased equivalent
(2) I really, really enjoyed Finland’s winning entry. Shows that humourous music really is appreciated, which was gratifying.
It is a bizarre event, though. Spex speculated that the only people who could adequately replace Wogan would be Ant and Dec – saddens me that they are the best that British television has to offer… but it did make a great deal of sense. Their high-energy idiocy might be the only thing that will wean the UK public off the reassuringly cutting wit of Wogan.
Back… on the BBC
So, the story of poor Guy Goma, who was brought on as a commentator for a BBC news programme about the Apple v. Apple courtcase, is an interesting one. Valuable lessons can be learnt from this:
Bloopers are funny, especially on the Beeb!
Bad though I feel for Guy Kewney, who was left waiting in the lobby as a fellow pundit taxi driver job seeker took his place and his identity on National Television, I can’t help but chuckle at the hilarity of it. And of course, both Guys have received an inordinate amount of media coverage, and Guy Coma will probably be offered a slot on the next season of The Apprentice thanks to his slick blagging skills. Presumably the Beeb will get Mr K back on to comment on some other breaking news story pronto!
Video is here, if you want a quick chuckle. The man done good.
April fools
Our man in Bolivia
Damian’s finally started blogging, at full speed and in quite an entertaining fashion. Thanks to Chris, as ever, for setting him up. He’ll be spouting travel anecdotes, cultural observations, pictures and podcasts from La Paz, and will provide some interesting, amusing, acerbic and probably cynical commentary.
I’ve subscribed to his RSS feed already ;).
How great news stories are born
“Did you see that over there, Jeff?”
“What Tim?”
“I thought I saw something in the water… look, there it is again!”
“You’ve had too much to drink, you fidgety old mucker,”
“It’s a giant fish!”
“Hang on… there is something…”
“A giant fish, I tell you, call the BBC!”
“That’s no fish, it’s a bleedin’ whale!”
“A whale! Crikey! What’s a whale doing in there?”
“Don’t rightly know. Look, mate, you call Sky News, I’m going to jump in and slap water at it.”
“You’re going to what?”
“Don’t worry mate, my suit will protect me. It’s from M&S.”
“Erm… ok. I’m off…”
ImmiNation
Chris’ post about the recently introduced British-ness test is damned astute, and pretty damn funny.
Its something I’ve thought about for a while: I am technically eligible for the ol’ pork pie and bowler hat passport, but haven’t as yet done anything about it. This whole test shenanigan kind of grates on me…
Makes me think vaguely about a TV programme I was on, years ago… “England my England”, a show that sadly screened before the full heyday of the Internet made it linkable to…. In any case, Peregrine Worsthorne and Darcus Howe came to my school (amongst others) and interviewed a bunch of us about Britishness, and what it meant to be who we were.
I don’t remember the detail of the conversation but I do remember thinking of it more as an exercise in PR for my school, and so pretty much missed the point. As the royal suck-up that I was, I wedged a couple of silver spoons in my mouth and came out with the catchphrase they used in the final cut — a (bearded) Malaysian Oxbridge candidate surrounded by an atypically International selection of students — claiming that “it’s more about who you are, than what you are.”
Crikey.
Well. Right. Apparently the British government agrees: at least, as long as you can get 80% on a test like this.
Open source beer…
…this is genius. I don’t even like beer, but it is a nice idea.
This kind of stuff will go in my Linklog when I get that up and running…
I got the power
Was a power cut at work today. Was a bit bizarre; traffic lights were out and there was the occasional blare of a siren whizzing past. Everyone’s first instinct was… “Crap, what’s happened now?” There is a sense of overwhelming irritation at every inconvenience the terrorists cause.
Interesting to me as fear was definitely a secondary emotion to irritation. Of course there is fear; but mostly, we’re just annoyed that its interrupting our schedule (of tea, cricket matches, and all other things British, of course).
Nonetheless, it was a relief to find out that the power cut was caused by an overzealous engineer digging through a power cable by mistake…