Sack The Cat

This has been well broadcast around the blogosphere but I thought I'd link to it anyway, because it made me laugh :)

garfield minus garfield

"Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb."

Comentarios

I have had a little tweak of the comments system on this here blog of mine. Now, when you click the Comments link, they will magically appear on the very same page, through the power of The Dark Side (AKA: JavaScript). And click the link again to hide them.

Should you decide you then wish to inject your consensus challenging opinions into the ongoing diatribe (and please do) then just head for the "Post A Comment" link underneath them (if there are any, which, if I'm honest, there usually aren't.)

Also, due to the emergence of a certain amount of comment spam, I am toying with the idea of word verification; I'll try to avoid it if possible because it's a pain in the a$$.

Anyway, come on in and speak your brains...

Sozzled & Mash(ed)

Is it Fathers' Day soon?
And the double awesome thing is that the whole book is also available online, for free gratis, nilch:

"Cooking With Booze, the book, was published in the UK in October 2007, in a very traditional form. But it’s a book that couldn’t have happened without the web, so I thought I should give something back. Here it is: the complete text of CWB, online for all. If you like the book, cook one of the recipes and enjoy it, I’d be very grateful if you’d buy a copy, but if not, no worries."

But you know you really, really want the print edition, don't you. I do. Oh, yeah.

Happy 25th Birthday, Eduardo

Arsenal striker Eduardo Alves da Silva is 25 today.

Rather a shame that his leg was shattered in two places on Saturday by an utterly disgraceful high tackle in the third minute from Birmingham City fuckwit* Martin Taylor**, isn't it?

~SQUEAMISH WARNING~
~DETAILED PICTURES HERE~

If it was malicious, and he intended it, ban him for life. If it wasn't, and he is just clumsy, he shouldn't be playing in the Premier League. Most Sunday morning pub teams (and I have played for a few) wouldn't accept tackles like that from their defenders; shin high, studs up, sliding in at speed.

Contrary to many, I am placing the blame firmly at the door of Alex McLeish, Birmingham City's manager. It is almost certain that, in the dressing room before the game, he fired his payers up with the instruction to "go and let them know they've been in a game", "get yourselves in their faces early doors" and "the way to beat Arsenal is to kick them up in the air". Unfortunately, if you do that with players of obviously limited ability, people get hurt. If that is indicative of how English club managers tell their teams to play against Arsenal, maybe that European Super League isn't such a bad idea. At least the swan-diving, shirt-pulling, face-spitting Italians play decent football :)

Seriously, though, I am livid. I don't buy any of this 'freak accident' bleating from certain sections of the media (and Garth Crooks can just fuck right off, while we're here). The studs-up challenge was banned for a reason. With the number of 'potentially career ending challenges' analysed on Match Of The Day each week, you'd think the authorities might have reviewed the punishment for such atrocities and forced both clubs and players to address the idea that this is unacceptable and remove it from the game. But no, as it stands, Martin Taylor will serve the same ban as Jeremy Aliadiere got for bitch-slapping a Liverpool player that same afternoon. Thank you, the FA, the Premier League and all you bloated paté-munching FIFA/UEFA suits - I hope you're happy.

Get well, Eduardo. Soon, if possible, but fully at least.

UPDATE: Patrick Barclay in the Daily Telegraph says similar

* you will know that I rarely swear on my blog but I cannot bring myself to describe him as a 'footballer'.
** whose nickname is 'Tiny', I assume referring to his brain.

Ready For The Floor?

That gratuitous Hot Chip reference also serves to announce that we have ripped up our somewhat tired-looking carpets and had a fantastic baked oak wooden floor laid this week. The whole of the downstairs looks like a different house; Tom has done an awesome job, highly recommended! And, of course, I have taken my usual badly-focused, over-lit pictures:


Unfortunately, the beautiful new floor has since served to highlight the terrible state of our skirting, doors and woodwork. I sense a job coming on....

ONOZ, TEH BONOZ!!!111

Good grief...

U2 in 3D

So not only are they (still) utterly crap, but the IMAX now makes them bigger and the 3-D makes the buggers nearer. Never has the phrase "Don't stand so close to The Edge" been so apposite*.

* I'm here all week, try the soya protein-based meat-substitute cutlet

To My Lovely, Pregnant Wife

(xkcd again, he's very good...)

Tessellations

These rather put my origami X-wing (of which I was extremely proud) to complete and utter shame:

Tessellations

Astonishingly, they are all made from a single sheet of paper.

Are You Coming To Bed?

Yet again, xkcd right on the money:

xkcd #386

Overheard #36

One from this morning which left me chuckling gently:

"Ah, crisps - the breakfast of champions!"

I Knew It!

The first time I post about how well Arsenal are playing in nearly three months and THIS happens!

We were utterly, utterly woeful. That'll teach me. Sorry, Arsene...

Ready...Set...Unravel

So I reckon my extensive sound engineering experience puts me in the running for this:

speedcabling
"CAT-5 Ethernet cables are to be used. Contestants may use any cable they wish, as long as it is capable of carrying 100Mb/s prior to competition. During competition, the colors red, blue, and yellow are used for the 7, 15, and 25 foot cables resepectively."

Although I'd have a definite advantage if it was untangling a 500m run of 24-pair multicore running round the battlements of a medieval castle in Romania at 3 in the morning. Done that.

Max Out

Oh dear.

Guardian travel writer blags a freebie for his son to write a travel blog. Ripped to shreds in the comments:

Max, 19, hits the road
There's even already a parody blog:

Wayne Type, 19, hits the road
Not sure what they're angrier about - the fact that his Dad wangled him the trip, that a national newspaper is paying for what is essentially his gap year or that he comes across as the living embodiment of Nathan Barley.

Of course, the flip side is that it would seem he's young, good looking, connected, cool and about to go on a year of partying at someone else's expense - teensy bit jealous at all, chaps?

Winner Takes All(en)?

Missed 'Lily Allen and Friends'? Regrettably not.

BBC3 - new look, new schedule. One headline-grabbing part of which is the aforementioned so-called chat show; could we have a new Parky for the MyFaceBebook generation? No, I'm sorry; it was utter shite. That's 42'25" of my life I will never get back. Apparently, ~50 audience members walked out of the recording - what, not all of them? Was there something wrong with their legs? Good grief.

Whilst I have previously admitted that she can just about hold a tune and, to be fair, does capture a certain element of the modern LDN zeitgeist, she's no Russell Harty. The most entertaining bit (and stay with me here) was when she asked her interviewee if he had ever thought of calling his child "Cuba Gooding Junior, Junior" and proceeded to get the giggles. Yes, that was the funniest bit. Please make it stop...

(On another note, in that ad up there for BBC iPlayer, hasn't she been Photoshopped to within an inch of an ungodly, if somewhat intriguing, liaison of Anna Friel and Natalie Imbruglia? Anyone? Bueller?)

Lurvecast

Heh, someone who snubs Valentine's Day nearly as much as me:

The Lurvecast @ Song, by Toad
Great track list:

01. Nirvana - Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (00.23)
02. The Velvet Underground - Femme Fatale (08.06)
03. The Raveonettes - Little Animal (10.57)
04. R.E.M. - The One I Love (13.57)
05. Half-Man Half-Biscuit - Paintball’s Coming Home (20.54)
06. The Pierces - Boring (25.43)
07. (The Real) Tuesday Weld - Terminally Ambivalent Over You (31.03)
08. Shane MacGowan & the Popes - Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway (34.41)
09. The Wave Pictures - When I Leave You For Somebody Else (38.30)
10. Pulp - Pink Glove (45.33)
11. The Raincoats - Don’t Be Mean (50.15)
12. Rufus Wainright - One Man Guy (59.34)
13. William Shatner - Ideal Woman (66.34)
14. The Sequins - Nobody Dreams About Me (71.45)
15. The Smiths - Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (77.31)
16. The Walkmen - Don’t Forget Me (82.58)

All Heart

With the unfathomably popular Valentine's Day coming up, and having just seen the bill for our new wooden flooring, I thought I'd inject a hint of realism into the proceedings with this splendid comic from Dan Piraro's 'Bizarro' strip:

(obviously you can click above for a bigger version or you could just squint at it for five minutes and give up, moaning about me giving you a terrible headache and the resolution of your screen and look at the price of fish these days, etc and so on and so forth)

Take Five

I haven't been writing about the football much, possibly because I don't want to jinx Arsenal's current good form, or maybe just due to sheer laziness :)

Anyway, last night we beat Blackburn 2-0 at home to go 5 (count them) points clear of Manchester Utd at the top of the league, with the same goal difference, +36. I saw most of the match in the Blythe Hill Tavern* with Paul; it was a slightly nervous affair with us defending our early lead on 4 minutes (go Senderos!) for the rest of the game, Adebayor scoring the second in the last minute. We had chances to kill it off (Hleb in particular had a couple of fine efforts from the edge of the box, one thudding back into play off the post with Friedel well beaten) but they didn't really threaten. Even after a couple of spurned opportunities from Arsenal old-boy David Bentley towards the end of the first half, I always felt that if they did mange to bundle one in, we would be able step up and go on to get 3 or 4. Nobody really performed to their best - I felt Flamini was subdued by his standards this season, and Eduardo drifted in and out off the wing - although with so many of our squad on the treatment table, perhaps the team were told to hold something in reserve.

So, with Cit-eh beating the Scummers at the weekend, we have a cushion at the top. With massive games in the FA Cup (Man Utd) and Champions League (AC Milan) coming up, who knows what Le Prof is thinking about the squad, but it will be nice to have Touré, Eboué and the hugely-improved Alex Song back from their ACN trip, even if they are all crocked, again.

Up the Arsenal!

* fantastically welcoming local Irish pub, if you're passing, by the way...

Recurring Theme

So Freyja was given a very nice box set of Charlie & Lola books as a ChristBirthdayYuleMas present and they have soon become her bedtime book of choice (with the collected adventures of Mog a close second).

Anyway, contained within the package was an audio CD of the aforementioned stories, read by the actors children who voice the TV series. And preceding each story is the theme tune to that TV series. And having had this on all weekend, much to Freyja's delight, I now can't get the blasted thing out of my head. It may well be a perfectly tuneful ditty with a definite hint of late-70s sitcom...


...but when you are whistling it at 7:15am whilst waiting for the coffee machine at work, you know it's going to be a long day. All together now, dah pappa dah dah pah-de-pah, de doo pappa...

I think I possibly need to say that the Charlie & Lola theme music is (c) Tiger Aspect but if anyone from Tiger Aspect is reading this I shall be (a) amazed and (b) offering my services to do a hardcore rave remix...

Evoke Minster

Any York-based types go to this or know anything about it?

Evoke: York 2007

"A specially commissioned project for Illuminating York 2007 in northern England, Evoke is a massive animated projection that lights up the facade of York Minster in response to the public, who use their own voices to "evoke" colourful light patterns that emerge at the building's foundations and soar up towards the sky, giving the surface a magical feeling as it melts with colour."

It was in Oct/Nov last year, apparently - any mention in the Yorkshire Evening Press (or were they too busy complaining about the Ring Road, dog mess and empty shops in Stonegate)?

More pics here (thanks, Rowan)

NO TO GAM£ 39

Bloody silly idea. Tell them here:

FSF: NO TO GAM£ 39 Petition

"I wish to protest at the Premier League's proposal to play a 39th round of foreign fixtures. In proposing to seed these games the Premier League has shown beyond doubt that it is more interested in making money than the integrity of the country's top league competition. The idea shows a total lack of respect for the game's supporters and those of other domestic leagues world-wide and I strongly urge all Premier League Chairmen to reconsider this ludicrous, insulting and greedy decision. NO TO GAM£ 39."

If they are that desperate to play a match overseas, how about the Charity Community Shield? It has no bearing on the outcome of the season, is usually a fairly entertaining match (for the same reason) and as it is between the winners of the Premier League and the FA Cup, will almost certainly be two teams that everyone might like to see.

Bingo. You can thank me later...

UPDATE: if they keep serving up this drivel, we have nothing to worry about; no-one in their right mind overseas will pay to watch it and we can all go back to business as usual...

Logo Agogo

Worth a glance, some fantastic olde worlde company insignia evolving into the brands we know today:

Neatorama: Evolution

Thunderbreak!

This is crazy-good-euro-synth-pop-funtime:

Tony-b Machine
There goes the evening...

(via rubbishcorp)

Instapaper

I really like this, sort of a mini/disposable del.icio.us for long-ish articles you might want to read later:

Instapaper

"A new (free) web service that makes it really easy to save web content you come across to be read later, when you have more time."

Quite...

Eight Things That Are Better Than Free

This is really interesting:
The Technium: Better Than Free
"When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable. Well, what can't be copied?"

I'm sure much of this has been mooted before, but maybe not explained quite so lucidly. Well worth a read.