Year: 2003

I get a lot of spam email.

Yes, I know it’s a bit of a hackneyed contemporary cliche to get upset about this, but it still bothers me. And ok, so I have a fair idea why I would get a lot of spam, I mean there’s:
(1) the Hotmail address, from surely the most spammed email provider of all;
(2) the fact that I’m signed into MSN all day at work (hmm, there may be a pattern developing here);
(3) the fact that my email address is plastered all over this site;
(4) the fact that I have been merrily giving the address out to any old website that asked for it for the last 3 years (case in point: I have a yahoo address that I don’t really use much and certainly never give out that hasn’t had a single bit of spam since I got it).

Anyway, so I have, I suppose, been asking for it. But it’s not so much the volume of junk that really gets me, rather the (often contradictory) nature of the subject matter. I do have to wonder where some of these people got my address from.

Which web form, exactly, was it that I filled in where I mistakenly checked the boxes to indicate that I am an overweight, debt-ridden, balding gentleman who has issues with the size and performance of his, ahem, manhood? (Some kind of Philip Larkin figure, perhaps?) Furthermore, what kind of a depraved human being do they think I am that I would interested in an email such as the one that arrived in my inbox this morning with the subject heading “Sticky Horse Sex”? (Despite my curiosity I somehow managed to resist opening that one. I am at work you know).

I mean, really, who do these people think I am?

Oh, and if you’re interested, this is what started it all.

Drinking on a school night is never a good idea.

Glastonbury’s on then. Radiohead to headline the Friday night.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

The hearing for the Glastonbury festival license is tonight.
Let’s hope it goes well.

Hmm. I must have missed the increased security presence at Heathrow this weekend. I didn’t even see a tank.

Very disappointing.

Then again… I’m supposed to be flying out of Heathrow tomorrow so I’ll be able to report first hand on the new “security measures” (assuming I make it back in one piece that is).

That’s always assuming I actually get away in the first place after the saga that was getting my tickets from lastminute.com, whose customer “service” leaves rather a lot to be desired.

Are tanks exempt from the congestion charge?

So I was (probably) the only English person in an Aussie bar in West London last night to see England lose miserably in their 3-1 defeat to Australia.

As the final whistle went, they turned the sound off the football and started playing that song that starts: “I come from the land down under…”

Oh dear.

“We’ve never done an encore, and we’ve never sold our soul and done a TV advert like all the other bands you play either…
Some bands still have principles.
We’re one of them.” [Nicky Wire, November 2002, the Jo Whiley show, BBC Radio 1]

I guess that must be a different Manic Street Preachers who recorded the song Australia, currently being using on a UK TV advert for, ahem, Australia.

I saw the Flaming Lips live yesterday. Sheer genius.

They had all the usual props out of course: fake blood, interesting visuals, the nun finger puppet. Even the tellytubbies made an appearance. They also had giant balloons bouncing around the audience (just beautiful) and about 10 people on each side of the stage dancing throughout the entire gig in animal costumes. We even had Beth Orton pop up beforehand to join them playing their cover of “can’t get you out of my head”.

I was smiling all the way home.