Helpful Dialog Box Of The Day

Many thanks to Apple's Garageband for flagging up this helpful little gem whilst I was (successfully) installing a Jam Pack.

And Let's Have Harold Shipman As "Old People's Special Envoy" While We're At It...

(*Above: Tony Blair, currently busy bringing peace to the Middle East)

I'm in a quandry. After nearly suffering a debilitating Anger Stroke over the suggestion that Tony Blair should be EU President, I'm now finding myself wildly swaying between two points of view; he should absolutely NOT be, and, actually he should...

Here, arguing the brilliantly mishcievous case for ensuring the fucker DOES get the job is George Monbiot, whilst on the other hand with the more traditional and generally popular view that he he should basically just go burn in hell - though far better expressed - is Mark Steel.

Which to choose, which to choose... Oh - hang on. We don't choose. There's no bloody vote is there.



Pic; original source unknown.

Cause Of Spontaneous Human Combustion Discovered...

Cigarette lighter cufflinks of course. Genius.

Pic from Gizmodo.

Microsoft's Marketing Department Needs Sectioning

“In a lot of ways, you’re just throwing a house party with Windows 7 as an honored guest...”
In a lot of ways, you're clearly mental...

& in a lot of ways, this is very very funny. Kind of creepy too though, as it appears to be some kind of portal into a parallel universe where everybody's a bad actor. And everybody's on crack.

Still, worth sharing for sheer *WTF* value.

Great Awesome Amazing Incredible

Say Hello to the most important bits of last week's Apple Keynote. The adjectives, apparently. ;-)
Er... great!

Facebook Tip Of The Day... Yarrrrr...

Go to the bottom of the Facebook page. Click on the language settings (yours will probably be defaulted to "English (UK)"...) and try setting it to "English (Pirate)" instead.
Enjoy.

Yarrrr.

Bullshit Bingo

I was sat in the beer garden of a bar in Southwark on Friday evening, waiting for some friends - but couldn't help but be drawn into the hilariously "serious' conversation of two businessmen bellowing at each other in loud and nonsensical business cliches, while I waited.
I really wish I could have written it all down as it was pure comedy gold (and I love it when people really feel they have to be heard by everybody else in a bar or restaurant, as it usually means they're idiots) - lots of stuff about "managing upwards", working in a "matrix" (I thought that was fiction I must admit) and "kicking shit in the UK division". But the bit that really got me (and I hope their business isn't involved in any kind of Physics discipline) was when one of them banged out in a gloriously pompous voice a phrase to describe his position in the company; "Yeah, well that's the thing - the gravitational field is much stronger the closer you are to the magnet..."

Tosser.

"LOL"

I may be getting a bit more reactionary in some of my views - like for instance I reckon using a mobile in a car should result in the filth being allowed to crush your motor into a cube *on the spot* - but it tends to be that these views come from decent observations. And one of those is that people CANNOT drive while using a mobile. Nor can they cycle while using one. And let's be honest most people can barely walk while using one (and alarmingly I'm talking about people using it as a frikkin' phone not as a texting device here...)
Hence why I love this cartoon. Thanks to Chris at Gonzovision for sending it on.

Matthew Norman: Sheer Class

Just before I head off for the weekend to Donington Park for the MotoGP (updates across the event on the BatiFan Blog and at BatiFans.com) I just had to post this stunning hatchet job by Matthew Norman in The Independent.
Although the article doesn't actually address the primary questions of the dishonesty of the mission in Afghanistan - and the basic principle that our troops should not be there and be in harm's way in the first place - it *does* do a smashing job at ridiculing the utterly ridiculous George Foulkes. Not hard, I know - small children could probably do a decent job - but Matthew Norman's rage at the (literally) Brown-nosing dreg is pure joy and pure class.
Read the article in full...

Darth Vader - Luke's Father AND Whistler's Mother

Get yourself over to Worth1000.com to take a look at their challenge to get people to drop Star Wars characters into famous works of art. Some aren't too great, to put it mildly - but some are truly excellent.

Deadline

Post-its... one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. Stop-motion... sublime in the right hands (Ray Harryhausen, Vision-On, Sledgehammer, Creature Comforts...)
Put them together - in the form of a senior Art & Design School project by Bang-​yao Liu and you have "Deadline", a wonderfully playful and imaginative take on procrastination and pressure.
Triffick :-)

Sucky Tattoos

Whilst it's not really okay to laugh at the girl who accidentally got almost 60 stars tattooed over her face (well, it kind of is actually - she looks about 12 and shouldn't be allowed within a mile of a tattooist for at least another 6 years...) - it absolutely *IS* okay to laugh at this sorry shower over at YourTattooSucks.com... my personal favouite being the cat's one-eye in your belly button. Class.

Cats Outsmart Scientists By Pretending To Be Thick

This piece in the Guardian, reporting on a scientific “test” that proudly puffs out that cats are actually not that bright, is of course entirely wrong.

That a cat will not co-operate with an insultingly banal examination of its behaviour is not in the least bit surprising. Quite frankly I’d give them some misleading results and have a good old snigger about it if I was a cat. In fact I'd probably have a crap in their lunchboxes on the way out too, just for good measure.

Cats know perfectly well about all kinds of behaviour - that of live beings and that of inanimate objects - and they certainly understand cause and effect (mine have learned to open doors, find and conceal escape routes out of the garden, all kinds of smart and sophisticated stuff that requires cause and effect to be understood) and my money here would be on them outsmarting the scientists by refusing to do what’s expected of them and royally fucking with a stupid experiment that they rightly feel to be beneath them.

As one commenter wryly (& correctly) points out; “Dogs have owners, cats have staff”.

Anyway it’s as good an excuse as any to post up Eddie Izzard’s “Pavlov’s Cat” routine...

Cheap Gag Of The Day

Fnarr Fnarr...
Thanks to Chris

Paddington Never Used To Be In Camden....

Cool / weird trick of the day...

Click on this link to go to Google Maps, or alternatively try putting '54 Great Russell St, Camden Town' into the Google Maps page...

Then click on "Street View".

Street View, it would appear, is not only an intrusion into privacy but also some kind of portal into an alternate universe.

Shut Up, For The Love Of God Man, Shut The Hell Up

Lewis Comes Back Down To Earth

Although I tend to label myself an ex-F1 Fan nowadays, I must admit that I've found myself watching a bit of racing this season. I'd have probably watched a bit more if most of the Sepang race hadn't taken place under cover of tarpaulins on a monsoon-hit main straight in the dark. But nonetheless it *has* been kind of entertaining.

Apart from the continuing fairytale of Brawn GP, one of the funniest - yet also hugely grating - things has to be continuing disintegration of the sainthood of Saint Lewis Hamilton. And his outburst following today's Spanish GP just continued to confirm the kind of driver McLaren can be so proud of, repeatedly bitching about the car again and again.
I don't think I've encountered such a prissy whinge since my mum last read me "The Princess And The Pea". And I wasn't too impressed by the attitude then either...

In my decades following F1, I've continued to see pretty much all drivers - and certainly all the best drivers - intimately involved with the development of their machinery; ever more so as F1 technology became more and more sophisticated. Guys such as Schumacher and Hakkinen had great reputations in this respect, and don't forget Anthony Davidson whose technical input and driver feedback on the track and in the factory was famously highly regarded over the years.

So, since when did it become okay to just turn up and drive?
And bitch if things aren't going swimmingly?
I'd love to know, as to me it just looks slack and demeaning - and certainly not the attitude worthy of a world champion... (It also makes you think again about all the denials that Hamilton used to just copy 'Nando's setups at each race back in '07...)
Let's be honest, the guy has had a supreme set of wheels the past couple of years - and managed to lose a championship in one of them - and he can't expect things to always be perfect. Surely he was in some way a part of the development team for the car? (And if not, why not...) And surely his best move would be to button it (no pun) and lend some energy and driver input to making a better job of it.

The immature attitude - and the apparent belief that he merely needs to show up at the track - also makes me sad as it seems to be part and parcel of a diminishing McLaren team. I haven't always supported McLaren (my allegiance moved to Wolf when James Hunt did, and then to Ligier and Ferrari along with Didier Pironi, and so on and so on...) but I have always admired them in a huge way. And their continuing disintegration around their superstar is nothing short of tragic.

McLaren need a genuinely stellar figurehead back in place (and that's not Lewis's dad) and a team that functions as a team for a greater purpose than a single (and possibly undeserving) prima donna of a driver.
And they really need to keep Lewis away from the microphone more often.
Ideally by getting him to help work on the car.
But just keeping him away from the microphone anyway would be a good start.

May The 4th Be With You

If you didn't know, today is Star Wars Day...

Come On Barbie, Let's Get Tarty

Apparently in another civilisation-ending moment in history (certainly I would imagine for Daily Mail readers) Barbie has got a tattoo. The slut.
In fact, look closely at the picture and you'll see that she's also had some special tribal scarring to spell out the word 'Indonesia' on her bared torso.
Now I think about it, she's probably got the clap too - the dirty mare...

The News Quiz Is Back. Hurrah!

Great news - the smug, self-satisfied Now Show steps aside and in its place Radio 4's "News Quiz" returns tonight; Friday May 1st at 6.30pm (repeated Saturday at 12.30pm) - its superbly skewed weekly take on the world returning for an almost unbelievable *68th* series...
Sandi Toksvig chairs, and panellists include Andy Hamilton, Fred MacAulay and Jeremy Hardy.
There should be plenty to poke fun at...
If you don't catch it on the radio, then don't forget you can subscribe to it as a podcast on iTunes.

Wookiees: The Iranian Army's Secret Weapon

News from Iran: Whilst the world's attention has been focused on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's verbal attack on Israel at the UN Racism conference (though Israeli heckling and disruption beforehand & the boycott of people like the USA is apparently perfectly okay... you can behave like total wankers and get away with it so long as you're not Iranian it would appear), few seem to have noticed that the Iranian army actually paraded Wookiee snipers through the streets of Tehran at the weekend on the country's annual Army Day.
This should be of far greater concern to Israel - as these fellas, particularly if combined with a crack-squad of Ewoks, are bloody dynamite.
Wookiees originate from Kashyyyk (which now that I think about it could possibly be an Iranian name) and contrary to the photo, tend to prefer the bowcaster over the AK47.
You can find out more about them at Wookieepedia. Naturally.