The View from the Spaghetti Factory

As a user of several such things, this made me laugh…

Map of Online Communities (from xkcd)

Just a quick public service announcement, in case it’ll save anyone some bother…

I just noticed a comment on the bluesjamtracks Myspace page, where the request “please add me” was accompanied by a hotlinked picture of a comely young maiden.

I always remove spam and non-music advertising from our comments, so I clicked the picture to see what it would link to. It points at the URL http://d0f50129.com/login.php, where there’s a pretty convincing mock-up of the standard Myspace login page, except the “you must be logged-in to do that!” warning (and yes, the misplaced hyphen annoys me every time!) is on a red background, which I haven’t seen on the genuine Myspace site.

In short, a phishing attempt. There’s already quite enough comment spam on Myspace, so don’t fall for it!

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of optimism, but Gordon seems to be living in a fantasy world. Screaming from every tabloid headline and TV news programme today was the shocking news that… I can barely find the words to describe such horror… deep breath now…

A young member of the Royal Family has split up with the girl he was going out with.

Not surprisingly, media commentators and vox-popping members of the public have blamed the aggressive and intrusive press for making newly slebbified Kate Middleton’s life a misery and causing the eventual split. That’s rather disingenuous… we (and I’m using the broadest sense of “we”) get the media we deserve. The tabloids hound the Royals because we pay them to do so.

Granted, it’s not entirely one-way traffic… the media have played their part in whipping up the celeb frenzy. However, they’re simply exploiting their market. The fascination with celebrities began long before the Princess Diana hysteria, long before even the first movie stars of the 1920s. What’s different now, though, is the slack-jawed obsession with the trivial lives of people whose only achievement is to be given enough airtime to proclaim themselves “celebrities”. That doesn’t look like changing for a while, whatever Gordon Brown may think.

Some sort of evil virus has bribed its way past my normally cast-iron immune system. I’m not used to this… I just don’t *do* illness, okay?

Normal service will be resumed soon…

Y’know, I spend a lot of time backing the BBC. I’m happy to pay the license fee and I’m comfortable with the concept of a patriarchal state media corporation that dares to tell us what it thinks we ought to watch, rather than letting the “Great British Public” drag programming content down to the lowest common denominator. I’ll gladly defend it against the likes of Paul Dacre, who seems to think we’d be better off with a fully commercial US-style range of TV channels, where the primary motives are maximising viewing figures and keeping the advertisers happy.

There’s plenty on the various BBC channels that I hate. No problem… I don’t expect my every whim to be catered for. What’s sad, though, is when part of the BBC’s output goes so dramatically downhill, dumbing down faster than you can say “well… duh”. I’m talking about the news bulletins. With laptop on lap, I sat and watched tonight’s 10pm news programme, typing this accurate (-ish) transcription…

Yeah, I know I’m cynical and the Big Brother thing has (whether I like it or not) been a big media event, but really! And yes, the weatherman really *did* describe tomorrow as being “usable”. I may get out of bed after all.

However you choose to celebrate/ignore/abhor this “Pagan Festival Adopted by Christians and Now Largely Used as an Excuse For Mass Consumption and Crap TV, in Both Secular and Christian Communities”, please do it nicely, okay?

Back soon…

Having occasionally been known to post “Have Your Say” comments on news websites, often with tongue planted firmly in cheek, I guffawed heartily at the reader responses to this story from the Surrey Comet…

Marksman called in to kill Kingston’s pigeons

What tickled me in particular was the genuine response from (presumably) an old lady, standing like a flimsy barrier of normality against the oncoming surreal flood. We’re a witty bunch down here in SW London, y’know.

Spy death linked to nuclear thefts (Observer)

Why are they wasting their time investigating Russian nuclear sites? Get out there and search the roadside verges of Springfield!

This afternoon, temperatures are set to be hotter than at any time since yesterday afternoon. Even at 5:00 this morning, the sun strength was greater than at any time in the previous eight hours. This is likely to be the hottest and driest 19 July 2006 on record. We live in remarkable times, boys and girls.

Like all work-shy, not-enough-to-worry-about, Guardian-reading liberals, I’m incredibly concerned by the implications of global warming, not least the distinct possibility that it may have been caused largely by our own misuse of the planet. But can’t we just have some of this for a couple of months every year, without the nasty side-effects of global famine, floods and mass species extinction? If we promise to be well-behaved and put up with several weeks of slate-grey skies and sleet in the winter? Please, Mr Weather Deity, sir?

(Hang on… it hasn’t rained here in south-east England since 1937. If there’s any melted polar ice-caps going spare, we could make use of them.)

What is it about this country and the weather? We have a temperate maritime climate, and although our weather is changeable, it’s always polite and unassuming, never reaching extremes. Yet when it snows, our schools close, our motorways close and our public transport system grinds to a halt. When it’s unusually hot, our office air-conditioners fail, our roads melt and our public transport system grinds to a halt. When the leaves fall in autumn, our public transport system grinds to a halt.

I suspect it’s because we’re all too aware of the mild, non-threatening reputation of our weather. When building roads, railways or offices, it’s all too easy to quote our national winter and summer averages of 5 and 15 degrees and plan accordingly.

We also seem to suffer from an inability to make individual choices based on comfort. Now that’s partly down to meaningless social pressures (why anyone would allow their employer to dictate that they wear a collar and tie at all, never mind in summer, baffles me completely) but there’s also an inbuilt conservatism and lack of self-determination. I’ve boarded trains on hot summer days, to find a carriage full of sweaty people, none of whom has taken the initiative to open the windows. And the converse… cocooned by our ever-growing car culture and over-heated houses, people seem quite offended to find that a t-shirt and trackie bottoms just aren’t suitable for ambling down the High Street in January.

One of the recent memes doing the rounds of LiveJournal and other blog networks involved listing the births, deaths and events which share your birthday. I forget the exact rules, but never mind. Here (sourced from Wikipedia) is a selection of famous people who share my birthdate, although none were born in the same year…

Pietro Mascagni (composer - 1863)
Eli Wallach (actor - 1915)
Noam Chomsky (political commentator, linguistics pioneer - 1928)
Ellen Burstyn (actor - 1932)
Tom Waits (singer, songwriter, actor - 1949)
Jamie Clapham (footballer - 1975)
John Terry (footballer - 1980)

Now Jamie Clapham might not be as celebrated in his specialist field than the others in the list, but I’ve included him for the simple fact that, like me, he was born on 7 December in Lincoln.

Historical events? Well, the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941 is pretty notable, but laughably insignificant in comparison to the 1971 blaze at the Montreux Casino. Caused by a flare fired by an audience member at a Frank Zappa concert, the event inspired the song “Smoke on the Water”. However, all of this triviality is eclipsed by the events of 7 December 2003, when the Conservative Party of Canada was officially recognized after the merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (okay, which jumped up little political brown-noser thought it was worth adding *that* to Wikipedia?)

Deaths? Well, nothing particularly exciting… the biggest name is William Bligh (1817), inventor of the two-section chocolate-coated coconut confectionary (and hapless sea captain). You probably haven’t heard of composer Adrian Willaert (1562) but he was pretty important in the development of the Italian Renaissance madrigal. Lovely hands, too.

You know what? I’m going to do something to change history on my birthday and then kill myself exactly a year later. The 7 December page on Wikipedia is going to look pretty damned impressive, I can tell you…