Year: 2003

The other week’s NTK newsletter conatined a link to a fake camcorder review on DOOYOO (“…therefore, i choose to give this product a mediocre rating, mainly because of reliability issues”). You might think that’s amusing, but it’s no match for the unquestionable king of fake Internet user reviews:

Looking For-Best Of David Hasselhoff, as reviewed by the customers of amazon.com.

I first saw this over a year ago, and I’m pleased to see, from a quick return visit, that it is still going strong. Not only are there now 690 reviews for this album, but can it be that there is only one copy left in stock? Surely not!

“6 people recommended Walter, the Farting Dog in addition to Looking For-Best of David Hasselhoff [IMPORT]
5 people recommended Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean instead of Looking For-Best of David Hasselhoff [IMPORT]”

Genius.

I’m amused to read that someone is finding angel’s weblog not by remembering the URL, but by searching google for things like “accidentally snapping her head off her body”, “accidentally snapping her head off”, and “snapping her head off” not accidentally.

Apart from worrying about the fact that there are just a few too many results for the non-accidental head-snapping search result (the Internet once more proves to be a scary place), I think there is definite mileage in this. There’s no real need to have a catchy URL – if you could even get one these days – all you really need to help people find your website is an easily-remembered English phrase and Google.

Funnily enough, only the other day I was talking to Pete about this, and he told me that, rather than remembering the URL for this site, he just sticks brain surgeon’s salary into google. As Paste Magazine proudly occupies the number one search result for said phrase, it’s much easier for him to find us with than using the URL. We achieved this result without even trying as well – I might start using the phrase randomly and see what happens (without the apostrophe, we are languishing way down in second place, so something must be done about that for a start).

The whole brain surgeon thing started, for me, as a bit of a joke – it was just one of those random search strings that kept showing up in the logs (and continues to – already this month a significant portion of our referrals have come from people looking for information about this fascinating topic). The phrase originally appeared on this site in this story, and some time later I put together a page about some of the random search strings that were causing people to stumble across the site. Now, bizarrely, the original page has dropped out of the google results altogether, and it is the pages talking about the fact that we rank unusually high for a search on something wholly inappropriate that show up when we get the top result.

At the same time, we’ve dropped down to fourth in a search for creative writing magazine. That’s probably a fair reflection on the amount of new creative writing that’s going on around here these days, though.

If you can’t bookmark the site, then some of the other strings that you might like to search for to get back here include:
– ralph nader suing ali g

– kings of leon copy protection
– top 20 crappest towns
– serving fuckwits. Thanks, again, to Pete for sending me that one in an email entitled “Paste Magazine: Serving Fuckwits”. Seems rather appropriate somehow.

Then again, maybe I should buy a new catchier domain name. This site provides a list of English-language words that are still available as domain names. I notice that www.off-key.com, www.self-indulgence.org and www.low-end.com are all currently available.

According to this article: “the university course you pick may be related to the length of your life ahead and the way you die”.

Arts students die young, apparently, although I take some comfort from the fact that what the results actually seem to be saying is that people who smoke a lot tend to die young, and that arts students are more likely to smoke. It could be worse though: medics, “were most likely to die from alcohol-related causes”. Judging from the bunch of raving alcoholics I remember from Bristol, that seems about right.

Then again, you could just as soon run out into the road and get hit by a bus tomorrow (Now there’s a study that would make much more interesting reading – does a passion for literature make you more or less likely to die in some kind of tragic accident? Should I only board planes packed full of scientists, to keep the odds in my favour?). Last night, as we were leaving the pub, myself and Sally watched as one of our friends ran out across Clapham Park Road to catch a bus on the other side without looking and, in what seemed to us like slow motion, came within no more than a couple feet of being suddenly introduced to the bonnet of an approaching minivan that somehow managed to break in time.
All parties were unhurt (apart from some frayed nerves/brake pads perhaps), but it still provided something of a sobering end to the evening.

Oh dear. Over the weekend, E4 began showing the current US series of Big Brother. After spending an unhealthy proportion of yesterday glued to the story so far of the antics of these 12 unfeasibly good looking young people (and Jack), I believe Sally and myself are, for want of a better word, hooked. After the new depths of inanity plumbed by the UK version this year, the constant stream of Survivor-style challenges, contests for head of house, alliances and whispered nomination discussions (neither of which would be allowed in our version), makes a refreshing change. One of them has already been kicked out for throwing oversized chess pieces and plastic chairs around (well known dangerous weapons that they are); two of them got it on and then he voted her out the next day; all of which is not to mention the fact that 10 of the 13 original contestants are sharing the house with their ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends.

The only thing that might save us is the fact that it is only on E4, and we therefore have to be at my house to watch it.

Under normal circumstances, the only way you can visit The Houses of Parliament is by writing to your MP and asking them to arrange either for you to take a tour, or to sit in the strangers’ gallery during a debate. Now, I don’t know much about my MP, (the honourable member for Brentford & Isleworth, Mrs Ann Keen). I didn’t vote for her, for a start, and her career in government seems rather undistinguished: Judging from her voting history, she is happy to toe the party line (she voted for the war in Iraq, for example). Beyond that, all that I can determine from most of the questions she has asked in Parliament (which are all either about rubbish collection, recycling or the sewage works up the road) is that she thinks my home smells of shit.

However, during the summer recess, anybody can take a guided tour of the palace of Westminster. I was there on Saturday for the first day of this summer’s tours, and found it to be an absolutely fascinating experience. The tour offers a potted history of the buildings, the British monarchy, and the evolution of parliamentary democracy in this country, (one snippet I found amusing: when the monarchy was restored after the end of the republic that resulted from the civil war, the new King Charles had all those who had conspired against his father rounded up and tried for treason, including Cromwell, even though he had died some years earlier. The King had his body exhumed, taken to Westminster hall, tried for (and found guilty of) treason. Cromwell’s dead body was then hung, drawn and quartered).

The main attraction, for me, was the chance to visit the two houses, but you also get to see the Queen’s robing room, used when she arrives to open Parliament each year (where one of the doors leads, apparently, to a convenience – not part of the tour, sadly – for the exclusive use of the monarch), the central lobby (as seen on many an evening news report), and the gloomy Westminster hall (where many deceased monarchs have lain in state, as well as being the venue for trials involving dead bodies of revolutionaries).

I’d thoroughly recommend it, if you have an hour or so to spare over the next month. This tourist stuff’s great.

Very much enjoying listening to the Kings Of Leon album, which arrived from cd-wow yesterday. I was, once again, disappointed to see that I have received the “copy-control” version of the CD, but then reassured to find that, as with my copy of Radiohead’s Hail To The Thief, the copy protection doesn’t work. You just click “cancel” when you put the CD in your PC and it asks you if you’d like a copy-protected or non copy-protected version. I can then copy the CD onto my mp3 player as usual.

BMG offer some (not very) helpful information about their copy control policy on their website (www.bmg-copycontrol.info), but they fail to mention that they appear to be operating some kind of copy control honour system.

If you can overcome the feeling of being a tourist in your own home (although not literally in your own home, obviously, I mean that would be silly. Unless you’re the Queen or something), then I would thoroughly recommend the Jack The Ripper walking tour that I went on last night. The experience rather reminded me of one of those history programmes you see on BBC2 at about 7.30 in the evening, but without the reconstructions and Simon Schama. It wasn’t much of a walk, admittedly, probably covering less than half a mile over the course of the hour and a half tour, but the commentary provided a good overview of something I personally knew little about.

It was also interesting to see how the contrast between the City and the East End – just a few streets from each other – is still very much in evidence.

And while I’m on the subject of learning about London, this flash tube map, showing Harry Beck’s original 1933 design, the current map and the geographical location of the stations in zone 1, is well worth checking out. (Although I suspect that, even here, the geographical map is taking slight liberties with reality for the purposes of design – either that or the drivers on the circle line have to do a couple of nifty handbrake turns to get round those corners).

UPDATE: Pete Alerts me to this image, which shows the rest of the tube map as it really is. Look at how far Hounslow and Oakwood are from each other…

My ability to fall asleep at inopportune moments knows no bounds. Nightclubs, trains, hotels where construction work is taking place noisily outside, the flight path of the world’s largest airport – you name it, and I can probably fall asleep there. On Friday night, it was all I could do to struggle through 30 minutes of Punch Drunk Love before realising that I had spent a greater proportion of that time dozing than I had done awake, like some ageing narcoleptic, and crawled off to bed due to the fact that I probably wasn’t doing the film justice. Ah, such is the rock n’ roll lifestyle I lead these days.

Somehow, despite the early night, I spent most of Saturday feeling utterly exhausted. In fact, the only time over the weekend when my powers of sleep deserted me was Sunday night, which is rather disappointing and made Monday morning more than a little unpleasant, to say the least.

I spent Saturday afternoon at Kew Gardens with Sal. It’s the third time I’ve been there, but the first time it has been noticeably hotter outside the Palm house than inside. I was also surprised to discover that there’s a mini aquarium display thing underneath the Palm house showing various colourful tropical fish. It must have always been there and I’ve just never noticed it, but it did provide a diverting few minutes, as we watched a small fish chase one of the larger fish around while trying, unsuccessfully, to eat it.

On Sunday, Sal’s mum and her cousin returned from travelling in Europe, and after the not-being-around-when-their-initial-flight-arrived-due-to-Glastonbury debacle, we were sort of obliged to go and meet her off the coach and help with the bags. Now, I’d assumed that we’d be going somewhere logical, like Victoria coach station, or at least have arranged a meeting place that there’s only one of, but that would have been far too simple. Beforehand, though, we dropped in on Claire’s impromptu, “it’s a sunny day, let’s have a barbeque”, barbeque just down the road in Clapham south, for about 30 minutes, before we had to rush off (although we were there long enough to get the chance to see Claire’s excellent glasto photos, which included a classic picture of my head emerging, tortoise-like, blinking, through the tent flap one morning). Once it crept towards 3, we had to head over to Kensington, on the basis of what I now realise were the flimsiest of details: a text message indicating that their tour would drop them at the Hilton on “Holland Park Road”.

I now know rather more about the location of Hilton hotels in west London than I really need to, but the invaluable snippet of information that I will take from yesterday is that there are two Hilton hotels on either side of Holland Park. One is close to, but not on, the suspiciously small and residential Holland Park Road that we headed to; the other one is on Holland Park Avenue, over the other side of the park. I’m sure you can work out what happened for yourself, as events unfolded with a crushing inevitability not unlike they would in some shabby BBC sitcom. We met them in the end of course, some time later, (despite almost missing them again at our second meeting place, High Street Ken tube, after persuading them to get on the tube by themselves…).

Two things caught my eye this morning:

First, there’s this memo to staff at ebay. Must be a fun place to work.

Secondly, some of the ideas on this BBC news page about Ken Livingstone’s offer of £100,000 to anyone who can solve the problem of cooling the underground are fantastic. I vote for the gondolas!

Last night I went drinking and eating curry with my old colleagues. I’m still undecided about the whole issue of whether I made the right decision by taking the new job, but it’s slightly reassuring to realise that nothing ever changes; they’re still bitching about all the same stuff. I was surprisingly pissed afterwards, so much so that I fell asleep on the train and woke up in Feltham (again!) Luckily there was one more train back.

Some time this morning a water main burst up the road in enfield, this caused traffic chaos during the rush hour, but worse than that, the whole of EN2 has no water today, so we’ve got no means of making coffee in the building (we’ve also been asked not to flush the toilets unless it is absolutely necessary!) I’m struggling to stay awake after last night…

Say what you like about the state of London transport, at least it’s doing its best at keeping me fit. The more consistently unreliable the Victoria line, the more training I get for my twice-weekly evening 100 yard dash from the tube to the overground platform at Vauxhall. If you ever happen to be waiting for a train there just before 7, and spot a tall red-faced chap sprint up the last set of stairs, wheezing, and looking annoyed as he finds out that the train is actually delayed and he didn’t need to run after all, then that’s probably me.

If anyone’s ever thinking about livening up the olympics a bit, they could do worse than changing the events into something a bit more realistic (well, it’s probably the second thing you’d do, after just letting them take all the drugs they want to, and seeing what happens).

Yeah, sure, it’s pretty impressive that all those guys can run 100M in less than 10 seconds on a nice clear running track, but what about making it a bit closer to the real world? The hurdles is a step in the right direction, but they don’t go nearly far enough. It’d be much more interesting if they had to sprint up the escalator first (on the left, of course) taking the stairs two at a time, then dodge past the crowds fumbling for their tickets, run along the subway tunnel (on the wrong side, if necessary), apologise to the homeless people, sprint up the stairs to the outside world, dodge more people looking for their tickets, run past the kiosk without stopping to buy anything, and finally up onto the platform. Of course they would have to build wierd new stadia to house these courses. I imagine something a bit like Gladiators, but without Ulrika and Fash, obviously. Then again, they could just give London the 2012 games and have it in the actual tube stations; it’d certainly save on the cost of hosting the games and provide an excuse for our shoddy transport infrastructure at the same time.