So I’m quoted in a major newspaper as a Nestlé expert; presumably this is a terrible, right-wing, baby-killing thing. However, the newspaper is the Guardian; presumably this is a terrible, left-wing, Islamonazi thing.
So on average, it all works out. This is the glory of being a centrist media whore…
Update: and I’ve done it twice in one day – now on the BBC, talking about booze…
I’d so far managed to miss the stormlet-in-teacup about American sandwich chain Quiznos licensing Joel Veitch’s Spongmonkeys in its new advertising campaign.
The news is good news; particularly given that Weebl and Bob now also star in a butter advert [link dead, now a malware site], it seems clear that B3TA is the new sex.
One particularly nice touch is that the Martin Agency (a deliberately “quirky” offshoot of ad giants Interpublic), which commissioned the Quiznos commercial, also represents the US Department of Homeland Security. I can’t wait until John Ashcroft and Little Goth Girl are united on screen…
Arnold Schwarzenegger has made a very sensible decision on smoking policy, despite being a right-wing politician from California. No smoking allowed in buildings with roofs – so remove the roof…
On the other hand, his solution isn’t too applicable to the UK or New York – I’m pretty sure that if we adopted it, the risk of hypothermia would far exceed any risks from smoking.
Update Feb 19: I knew it was too good to be true. Oh well.
I got my first ever abusive comment today – hurray! Oddly, it wasn’t on a post about Israel and Palestine, or America’s place in the world, or even abortion; it was a post about nightclub bouncers. Who are still scum, although I’m happy to make clear that I don’t actually believe they deserve to be shot.
This brought me onto thinking about censorship on blog comments sections. I’m well aware that blog proprietors are legally obliged to censor things that are illegal (indeed, I’m grateful for one blogger for editing my comment posted on their blog about a lying crook who I didn’t then know to also be litigious, willing to perjure himself, and to have already won libel cases through a combination of the latter two traits), and that comment spammers should probably be flayed alive.
However, censoring anything that fails to meet these criteria makes you look like a bit of a muppet. In some cases, this revelation adds nothing new to the stock of publicly available knowledge. It’s harder to explain why people who are thoroughly worthy of respect do the same…
Flame wars are either fun or boring. Long flame wars hosted on your comments section are always entertaining, especially if you don’t have to take part; and when flame wars are boring, they’re easy to ignore (don’t click any comment box which claims to have over 30 comments, for example).
If you’re being verbally abused by someone who you believe is less intelligent than you, then this is also amusing (I mean online; in the real world it teeters on the boundary between amusement and potentially getting-your-head-kicked-in); if you’re being verbally abused by someone who you believe is more intelligent than you, then you should consider rethinking your position…
Either way, life without flame wars would be much less fun. We’d miss out on classic comedy gold such as this:
Kieron is a typical liberal in that he/she has to bolster his arguments with attempts to put down anyone who doesn’t agree with him/her […] Unable to refute with facts, volume and ad hominem attacks became their only recourse.
(sadly, the source blog doesn’t permalink comments – scroll down quite a long way).
I’m sceptical about the case against US soldier Ryan Anderson, who allegedly passed Al-Qaida military secrets in an Internet chatroom*. But whether he’s guilty of passing military secrets or merely of being a Muslim gun nut, the New York Daily News’s article on his arrest says disturbing things about about America today.
Anderson wrote a letter to the Spokane newspaper on April 9, 1998, that should have raised alarms, warning that he could come to decide that the U.S. was no longer “based upon the freedom I was taught to love.”
“Should have raised alarms”? Why not just lock him up for being un-American and throw away the key…? Then again, this is a country where schools have a “zero-tolerance ban on jokes”.
*Incidentally, how does this work?
PrivateRyan: got mil secrets 2 give away 2 my islamic bros!
Osama_bin_Laden: send thru 2 my cave
Osama_bin_Laden: wanna cyber?
The mind boggles.
SBBS is #6 on Google for “necrophiliac porn”.
Woo! Yey!
Oddly, and perhaps thankfully, none of the top 10 sites actually feature necrophiliac porn.
Update 18 Feb: Fuck me! I’m officially the top site on Google for necrophiliac porn. Wow…
1) Work seems to be getting in the way of blogging again. I’m doing 14 hour days and am starting to dream market data. Although last night I dreamt I told my boss to fuck off and stick his fucking job…
2) Leftlog PolitX has moved. Not sure about the leftlog title (at least one of the PolitX writers is more a libertine-libertarian), but it’s well worth following.
3) One of my recent Google referring searches was “who to write to about obscenity on UK TV”. I hope the nannying scumsucker found what they were looking for… Cunt.
4) As is traditional when popular, successful Democrats appear, right-wing scumbags are crawling from the woodwork to smear John Kerry based on his sex life. Where’s Ken Starr when you need him?
Actually, the last one was a news post, not a blogging meta-post. Does that save me from the deepest circles of hell?
Question: is there anyone out there who -doesn’t- agree that all nightclub bouncers are vile scum, and cheer when some punter retaliates in the way they fully deserve (for example, by turning up after their shift and shooting them dead…)?
I used to feel the same way about policemen, but now realise that most of them range between average and good people trying to do a hard job. I guess it’s possible the same is true for bouncers – but it seems unlikely.
Coppers have to stop bad people from doing horrible things. Bouncers have to stop people from being in a club if they’re wearing trainers, or have had a couple of drinks already, or are falling asleep, or are generally doing anything you might want to do on a night out… Remind me why they even exist?
The fallout from last week’s Janet Jackson “scandal” is genuinely unbelievable.
I’m not entirely sure what kind of brain-dead fundamentalist lunatic would be offended by the sight of… shock… horror… a breast (although I do accept that quite such a pathetic attention-seeking stunt could be considered offensive by some). But apparently middle America is full of them… and as a result of the dire situation of national emergency that Ms Jackson has created, a shot of an old woman’s cancerous breasts will be censored from ER.
Meanwhile, as on most subjects, the British public have a far more grown-up and sensible attitude to obscenity on TV: they realise that it’s both big and clever. And they laugh at Jordan’s tits, which is the only viable reaction to them (unless you’re a washed up Australian pop star, apparently).
New York and California are among my favourite places in the world, being filled with fun, groovy people, interesting stuff to do, and a sense that Things Are Really Happening and History Being Made. It’s a shame that the bits in between take more or less the opposite attitude… Maybe we could extend the middle bits of Canada downwards, or something.