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June 30, 2004
Psycho-seagulls
Richard and Judy just did a piece on urban seagulls attacking people. Yay seagulls. Attack! Attack! No, not me I'm on your side...
by groc at 05:20 PM | Comments (1)
£1 trillion
Apparently UK consumers (one day soon the word citizen will slowly fade away altogether to be replaced by the word consumer) owe nearly £1 trillion pounds. Who encouraged the notion of home ownership? Who followed it up with the brilliant idea of replacing (admittedly -woefully inadequate) student grants with (still woefully inadequate) student loans. Whereby graduates are forced to start their working life with a massive debt millstone around their necks? Mmmm? That'll be the Tories then closely followed by the new tories (aka 'New Labour').
Sigh, one day -and hopefully it will before civilisation collapses altogether -human beings will remember the fact that money is a wholly man made invention. You would have thought back when in some countries (like in pre-WW II Germany) people had to push around wheel barrows full of banknotes which where only enough to buy one single loaf of bread, they might have twigged the absurdity of it all and said -'sod this for a lark'. Nowadays it's all numbers whizzing around in computers, and in the stock markets people are trading billions in goods that haven't been made yet and in crops that are years off being grown yet (the 'futures' market) and no one thinks this is a bit odd? A bit delusional? A bit coo-coo la-la-la happy la-la-la nuthatch land? No? Just me then.
by groc at 08:09 AM | Comments (4)
Dead good TV.
It’s gone now but ‘I am not an Animal’ was good.
The Mighty Boosh on BBC three is good. Blimey o'reilly - it even has it's own blog.
(Pre TV Boosh series RealOne 2002 interview here.)
Got broadband and lots of patience? Totally excellent must-see internet movie here. Via this website here.
by groc at 01:09 AM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2004
But,
but if the Government is to close down 550 benefit offices, where are all these 30,000 newly unemployed civil servants going to go to sign on for their job seekers allowance?
by groc at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)
mousie!
Now if only these came as standard. And I was very, very rich -enough so to be able to buy one of those over-priced mac things to go with it.
by groc at 07:19 AM | Comments (3)
June 28, 2004
I've got a theory
Groc thinks new housemate Becki is a BB plant. Groc thinks the original plan was to plant a 'superbitch', but after the Bedsit and resulting fight night fiasco BB have had to change tack and instead they've planted a psychologist so things don't get too out of hand, but at the same time stir things up a bit. (Going for a having cake & eat it scenerio.) I saw the bit on her first night in the house, where she was sat on the bed giving Jason a pep talk complete with pyscho-babble-like 'ooh you're special' interjections, then there's this bit where she gives a one-to-one pep talk to Nads. All highly suspicious...
She's like a weirder, creepier version of Deanna Troi out of Star Trek TNG.
by groc at 04:13 PM | Comments (5)
Disch
It's weird how things interconnect. About a month ago I bought 'The Brave Little Toaster' on video super cheap from 'The Works' (a discount bookshop & stationers) simply because I'd remembered seeing it on TV years ago and liked it a lot and so felt like watching it again. I then noticed to my great surprise that it was based a children's book written by Thomas M. Disch. Disch so happens to be one of my favourite writers from the 1970s ‘New Worlds’ influential new wave school of sci-fi. He also wrote a novelisation tie-in of ‘The Prisoner’ (which is currently being shown on BBC three as part of a 60s season they are running) which I bought (but haven‘t got around to reading yet) last year. Then what do I find upon reading an old interview with him? Only that he ‘bats for our side‘. Coo, I never knew that before. In one of the photos he has got the big burly bear look down pat.
Er... that's all so far.
by groc at 06:26 AM | Comments (1)
Radio 8 ball
Ask your question. A piece of music from their library gets chosen at random to answer it.
by groc at 04:13 AM | Comments (1)
June 27, 2004
bubblegum
"I have come to chew bubblegum and kick ass....and I'm all out of bubblegum"
A line I recently heard being mangled into near incomprehensibility by BB5's Victor in the diary room. I think it somehow got changed to '...give out lollipops...'
Anyhow, it comes from an Ad-lib in one of my favourite cult movies 'They Live'.
I'm parking some links about the movie here so I don't lose them.
(which I've politely hidden behind the 'continue reading' so any uninterested parties need not trouble themselves...)
A review and another and production notes.
Official site of Ray Nelson who wrote the short story the film was based on. His section on 'cartoonism' is particularly good. (I’m nearly equally as truculent -no one has ever managed to make me ‘run’ either.)
by groc at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
Look,
I know I haven't got my old cartoon strips up on the internet anymore -but why hasn't anyone else pointed out how much Marco is like my 'Stupid Faggot' character?
by groc at 04:12 AM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2004
marge
Other photos: mad pigeon one and two and Monkey tree.
by groc at 02:59 PM | Comments (3)
June 25, 2004
back when
Chrissie Hynde interviewed Eno.
by groc at 07:09 AM | Comments (2)
June 24, 2004
the mystery of
the rapidly disappearing toilet paper? Look no further than under Jason's bed. After all he is one of the biggest w+nk+rs in the house (hur hur hur*). Which brings me to wonder what did people do before they invented toilet paper -even before that nasty hard tracing paper stuff or even newspaper? Eurgh. Do I even want to know? (Extra Bonus link: The Madison Museum of Bathroom Tissue)
(*did you see the bit where Dan was telling Nads and another on of the girls how one night Jason had thrown a used tissue at him. Charming. In J's book that probably counts as a subtle bit of flirting.)
Tonight Marco, Michelle and Nads were having a joint screaming match about pancakes or something - which was so highly pitched -that only dogs could possibly hear it. 'Nuff said.
by groc at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
Is it just me...
by groc at 04:25 PM | Comments (5)
even more sketches
the incredible Hulk. Ali G (if he's a Gangsta -it's straight out of 'Bugsy Malone'). Barbie. Sindy. Ken. Bunny Boiler. Yoda. Frank N. Furter. Gollum. Tusky. Calamity Jane. Minnie Mouse (on speed)
“Someone could get seriously hurt.”
by groc at 02:19 AM | Comments (3)
June 23, 2004
taste
I'm just about to watch 'Honey, I ruined the house' even though after seeing the adverts for it I'm not sure if I'm going to like it. Taste is such a subjective thing and I've already got the impression that Miss Snooty herself is going to be totally dismissive of anything that isn't beige, or off-white, or all neutral tones and 'tasteful'...
(May I draw your attention to my blog's strapline.)
Update:
Phew! Yet another clueless prole's life has been saved by a TV-sanctioned expert. We can all sleep a little sounder in our beds tonight. Actually it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. (Bright red in the hallway -eek.) But I was mildly annoyed by the need to have an estate agent prowling around discussing house prices. Was the family selling the house? if not then why was it relevant? Except of course it was there simply to pander to the UK's current unhealhy obsession with property prices. In any case they were intruding upon the House Doctor's gaffe. It's usually her job to paint everything in bland neutral tones and make everything look like a hotel room, all ready to sell to those people who can't quite twig that the property they're being shown is going to look completely different once they've got their own furniture and tat in it. D'oh.
by groc at 08:35 PM | Comments (1)
babyseagull watch
Two other cute pictures are here and here.
by groc at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2004
teeeny tiny CD singles
Dammit someone's been reading my blog again!
Universal to revive dead CD single format.
Why haven't I got a well paying job as a trends consultant dammit?
by groc at 11:37 AM | Comments (6)
Mr Blunkett...
...demonstrates the new mobile biometric ID card tester...
by groc at 01:00 AM | Comments (2)
June 21, 2004
The
by groc at 08:28 PM | Comments (0)
spider 51 toothaches
From: Barbara Stapleton
Subject: spider 51 toothaches
When asteroid inside pork chop panics, pine cone living with wheelbarrow feels nagging remorse.When turn signal for beams with joy, support group defined by leaves.And fall in love with the dark side of her fire hydrant.
subtrahend steeple especial benchmark academe
by groc at 05:57 AM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2004
more sketches
by groc at 10:13 PM | Comments (3)
a little wonder
You know that current Wella Shockwaves advert where a young lad and his mates go to a 'trendy' nightclub and all their hair keeps changing moment to moment and acting up. Something to do with flirting with a girl whose hair also does magic tricks. Groc wants to know if the boy in the ad is the same model/actor who was in David Bowies' 'little Wonder' video -after all it would help explain the Bowie t-shirt that he's wearing.
by groc at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)
quick sketches
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by groc at 05:16 AM | Comments (2)
June 19, 2004
Quack
by groc at 09:50 PM | Comments (1)
baby seagull watch
The youngsters are energetically clambering all over the roofs now. Unfortunately one nest has already lost one of the chicks -they're now down from four to three.
More pix over here.
by groc at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)
going
I wonder if she could sue for mental cruelty? Doesn't being locked alone in a bedsit count as false imprisonment?
by groc at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)
Victor in name only.
Excuse me - but just how stupid is Victor of Big Brother 5 exactly? He’s been acting as if BB is a game of strategy, which he thinks he can eventually win by influencing votes amongst his friends (well, in fact he’s only got Jason as a friend [incidentally, why hasn‘t he been severely reprimanded for discussing nominations among the other housemates? Wasn‘t "nasty Nick" evicted for doing something very similar? Albeit in that particular case in a much more underhanded fashion]). Has Mr. Slick (urgh! my flesh crawls at the mention) never watched the program before? If so he would have twigged that BB is a glorified popularity contest -wherein the general public decides who is the most fanciable and -slightly more importantly -who is the nicest amongst the group. Unfortunately these are two main qualities with which Victor is severely lacking. He himself already subconsciously knows he’s unattractive -otherwise why would he always wear his hat so firmly pulled down over his head and make every effort to hide his body? As for niceness -he’s certainly felt no need to be openly congenial to anyone else in the house other than to 'co-conspirator' Jason. Even then he hasn’t ever really been nice to him, all he’s ever done there is share his dislike of all the other members of the house. Alternatively, what he has been happy to show to the world (via the diary room) is his arrogance, his self-delusion and as a unforeseen consequence his blatant stupidity. These qualities do not win votes.
Groc confidently predicts that as soon he’s been voted up for eviction -he’ll be gone. Then after the first round of ‘so you’re out of the house now -what was it like in there?’ press and TV interviews he’ll very quickly disappear back into total obscurity. Good riddance say I.
Update: Apparently most of the housemates were given formal warnings for the infamous fight night. Jason and Victor both have an additional formal warning each for discussing nominations. Although I can't understand why Victor didn't get another one for climbing onto the BB roof, that would have made three and cause for his instant eviction. But as BB is going out of it's way to be deliberately controversial (not to mention hypocritical) this year, we shouldn't be surprised he's still in there.
by groc at 12:43 AM | Comments (2)
June 18, 2004
where's he gone?
Mmmmm whatever has happened to the Diva that is troubled? There's no com and no blogspot? Has he gone and done a 'naked blog'? Oh wait - I see.
by groc at 10:20 PM | Comments (2)
Digital Rights Management systems are bad
Cory Doctorow speaks wise:
1. DRM systems don't work
2. DRM systems are bad for society
3. DRM systems are bad for business
4. DRM systems are bad for artists
5. DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT
But will anyone listen?
by groc at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2004
bug
by groc at 07:47 PM | Comments (5)
meltdown
So I was there tonight watching BB all the alcohol-fueled screaming, the tantrums, the tears, creepy psycho-bunny boiler Michelle drooling over the disinterested Stu, mouthy Emma and gangsta-wannabe Victor being pulled off each other, drunken girls crawling around on their hands and knees trying to find a quiet place to vomit... all up until the plug was pulled -where upon BB probably had to call in the riot police, and hide all the knives and sharp objects. Theatre of Cruelty or what? Looks like BB might have turned the heat up just a little too much this year.
I was joking about the last bit -but it turns out I had pretty much hit the nail.
Quote from one of Vanessa that they (the BB editors/censors) let slip: "What kind of animals are we that we needed security guards to come in and sort us out?"
At one point I also spotted a security guard stood in the background -eyeing Victor waryily...
More news here and here.
by groc at 03:33 AM | Comments (1)
June 16, 2004
today's number is
by groc at 11:32 PM | Comments (5)
separated at birth?
I was suddenly struck tonight how much that bald super villian with the huge mono-row that was in 'Thunderbirds' The Hood, looks like Marco of BB.
by groc at 01:44 AM | Comments (1)
June 15, 2004
BB USA
What *is* going on over there? Looks like the US Government just doesn't trust it's own people any more.
by groc at 02:51 AM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2004
Da da da da
Da da da da
Da da da da
Batman, oh this sounds goooooood.
by groc at 08:35 PM | Comments (1)
June 13, 2004
Dear Tony,
When members of your own party start getting disgruntled and express their worries.
You are doing something wrong.
When even members of your own cabinet resign over the issues.
You are doing something wrong.
When thousands take to marching in the streets against what you’re doing.
You are doing something wrong.
When in local elections voters turn against you so heavily your party ends up in third place.
You have done and are doing something very, very wrong.
Got the message yet?
Get your coat, and don't let the door hit you on your ass on the way out.
by groc at 09:42 PM | Comments (1)
Stepford
"It's a picture in which an intriguing subtext gets lost within a scattershot comedy."
See - maybe they shoulda let Tim Burton do it after all.
Update: Jason Silverman at Wired didn't think it was up to much either.
by groc at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)
asylum
Over at Burnt toast -Lisa bought attention to the news item of the Home office’s 'great' new idea of forcing immigrants to do community service work, this just after having their knuckles rapped for violating UN Human Rights by refusing even the most basic of subsistence to asylum seekers, (which Blunkett lost 3 appeals against) or in failed cases denying them any benefits and threatening to split families taking their children away from them and putting them into care. Presumably we’re supposed to see this as a step above obliging refugees to sleep destitute in the streets, or as a step up from them working on illegal chain gangs. It's certainly better than when they've sent people back to be imprisoned, tortured or killed without even the hint of a chance to claim asylum.
It’s apparent that immigration policy is in a total mess, that new legislation is constantly being drafted year upon year (usually by Mr Blunkett) but based only on emotional and irrational knee-jerk responses with frightening levels of mean-spiritedness -all too often playing to the little Englander’s narrow xenophobic mindset -hoping to keep their votes coming in -rather than to actual facts. But it’s legislation that frequently gets thrown out for being illegal or is heavily criticised for it’s less than humanitarian leanings. Meanwhile the genuine asylum seekers are, as always, suffering deprivation and having humiliation piled upon humiliation from all sides in what must already be an extremely grim situation to be in.
As an aside: another thing I don't understand is -given all the tabloid-driven hysteria over illegal immigration, why then has a certain brand of beer based a whole TV commercial around a 'cheeky chappie' pretending to be an illegal immigrant in order to be deported to various countries of his choosing.
by groc at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2004
fun and games
with the azkabar dementor guest starring Barbie and Harry in a fairy dress.
got broadband and lots of patience?
Stefan Nadelman: One Step Ahead.
there's more but I've not seen them all yet.
by groc at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)
going... going...
mmm no one has ever looked at the 3 pix in my New York zoo gallery. Think I'll delete it then...
by groc at 01:50 AM | Comments (3)
June 10, 2004
Let there be à la Carte cable TV
But nobody says, "Gee, you should only buy the sports section if that's all you want."
Errr... actually I do. Well, no it's the exact reverse actually since I have absolutely no interest in sports whatsoever. I hate the sports section of the paper. I resent that I'm paying for it, I resent carrying it home, I resent having to peel it off the other sections of the paper in order to get to the sections I do want to read. I resent having to bag it up and recycle it. In short -I hate having to have to deal with it. Let people buy the sports section if that's all they want - so I don't have to!
Anyone see the Telewest cable TV commercials offering subscribers a selection of what the viewers want to watch most -rather than having to subscribe to packages. Looks like they can do it...
Bonus link: Personal video recorders should worry the big media firms.
by groc at 08:30 PM | Comments (5)
How software---
should not be designed. (This from a website that should know better than to use frames.) I agree with a lot of what they have to say about Quicktime and it's overbig brushed aluminium look interface and it's controls and that stupid slide-out drawer. Although they've modified quite a few things since this article was written.
by groc at 03:52 PM | Comments (3)
June 09, 2004
How an
by groc at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)
Evil Big Brother
indeed. Quality television, quality producers.
by groc at 11:09 AM | Comments (1)
June 08, 2004
Watchdog's 'alarm' over ID cards
"It is not just about citizens having a piece of plastic to identify themselves."It's about the amount, the nature of the information held about every citizen and how that's going to be used in a wide range of activities."
--Richard Thomas
by groc at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)
sneaky snap
I've got an Aiptek pencam and I'm gonna use it.
by groc at 03:37 PM | Comments (8)
Baby Gull watch 2
More baby gull photos this way...
by groc at 01:12 AM | Comments (1)
June 07, 2004
eye Dee
So there's not enough volunteers for the pilot ID card scheme in Scotland. Oh dear. Oh dear. What they haven't said anything about is just how are the ID cards (once enough of them have been given out) to be further trailed and tested? Will police be knocking at people's homes at all times of the day and night demanding to see their ID? "Just testing Sir/Madam." Will roaming bobbies in the street be stopping random passers by? Will newagents refuse to sell newpapers or cigarettes to anyone without a card? "Just testing Govnor." Pubs and off-licenses refusing to sell alcohol to the un-carded? Will the unemployed be refused their benefits until they can show one? Will they have people trying to commit random acts of terrorism? Because surely it can't be enough to just give out the cards - haven't they got to be tested out in the real world to prove they actually do all these magical things Mr. Blunkett swears blind they will. (*Cough*)
Oh, by the way since terrorist attacks have been already falling to their lowest levels since 1969 without the introduction of the new ID cards. Isn't it already redundant?
By the way, we're still waiting for that first ever terrorist attack on British soil that might possibly justify all this mess... and nothing less than a plane flying into the London eye will do.
by groc at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)
Potter
The bf & me went to see Harry Potter yesterday afternoon. Yay. The series is improving with each successive movie. (This is the first one I’ll want to own on DVD when it comes out.) But the need to have read the books beforehand gets even more crucial as the ever increasing sizes of the novels means much of the sub plots, characterisation and other details from them gets jettisoned in order to shoehorn in the barebones basics to fit the movie’s running length. I’ve always thought that the books would have been better served if they’d been made as a big budget high quality TV series, where everything could have been rolled out at a much more leisurely pace and you wouldn‘t have lost so much of the detail of the magical world Harry inhabits. I think the Henson Workshop people would’ve made a reasonably good job of it. Although I think they wouldn’t have been able to resist having muppet-like creatures all over the place, I prefer the CGI ones of the movies.
One of the things that crossed my mind as I was watching it was how once upon a time people said that watching a film (or TV show) made from a favourite book was bound to always a bit of a disappointment -because it could never live up to what your own imagination and the mental pictures you’d created for yourself. But now with the art of special effects and CGI etc. that little truism no longer applies. Not by a long chalk. There’s no way any of my own personal mental pictures of the night bus, the marvellous Hippogriff (I want one) the Dementors etc. lived up to what they created up there on the screen.
Strange huh?
by groc at 08:51 AM | Comments (5)
June 06, 2004
Baby seagull watch
by groc at 09:06 PM | Comments (4)
June 05, 2004
Kitten
Groc fully agrees with Zbornak about Kitten. Annoying as most people seem to have found her -in a lot of ways she was right about a lot of things. We should all be making little acts of rebellion against the establishment and doing so all the time. If only just to make things difficult for those who are in control of us. The whole country seems to walking around in a sleep walkers' daze of bland complacent conformity. For instance why do we work the longest hours in Europe? It's not as if we're the most successful and richest country because of it. It's more to do with people continually being exploited because no one ever bothers to stand up say. "Well, no -thanks for the offer of extra hours. But you know, I should be working to live, not living to work. I'd rather spend those hours for myself rather than helping the company/corporation/whatever getting even richer.' Or "why is my bank making so much money off me, it's got my money to make money off my money and it then charges me interest and fees etc. in order to do it?"
We should be asking questions of any of the rules we're told to follow, like: what are they? Who put them in place and for whose benefit are they for? Are they genuinely fair? Because more often than not they're there acting against your best interests.
by groc at 11:25 AM | Comments (1)
June 02, 2004
Best s0ftware for you yesterday bunnies
Subject: Best s0ftware for you yesterday bunniesstubble relent standardly scrolls reversely
warrant prosecutor Richey units cousin
temperate rectums concubine novel tinniness
Valerie obedience disparity carbonate audiogramincubated propounds carters mightiest Wyandotte
BEST S0FT FOR Y0U
CL|KC HREE R|GHT N0W
Tories paraffin brazing legibly hashes
elevated parrot honorarium urgings outvoting
denseness damsel attracted coarse supersedes
relabel Millie endurance carves asphyxia
packaged avidly block recurring Sutton
tinniest validation veers vagrantly addresses
shudder Stirling fragments munitions together
tracings diplomas deadness Sigmund graspingly
ensured wheel blackest eminently sagebrush
Shiite Massey contrasts numerous Sikkimese
by groc at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)
Hummm
I've just heard one of the Big Brother contestants humming their own rap version of my last mpg offering. Weird.
Now an improvised acapella version of the Eurythmics 'Sweet Dreams'. Go Eighties music, go Eighties music.
by groc at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)
quack
quack (and a bit of a squeak).
by groc at 02:56 PM | Comments (1)
smile
by groc at 07:38 AM | Comments (2)
June 01, 2004
BB
Wow. This year it's not so boring. Radical.
by groc at 08:38 PM | Comments (3)
football blubber
Trash Addict has a rant about football -with which I fully concur.
A couple of years ago one Saturday afternoon the bf and I were hurtling up some motorway or other - I think we were on our way to Ikea. When we suddenly had the gross misfortune to find ourselves in the middle of a traffic jam caused by a post match exodus. I was completely horrified by the sea of revolting flobby sweaty blubber that we were suddenly surrounded by. I had never seen so many examples of revoltingly obese human beings en masse like this before. Eurgh.
Because, like the Addict, I simply don't 'get' football all I had was this vague notion that -aside from the mindless competitiveness and primitive tribalism -that it also involved fitness and health (not to mention a large sneaky dose of homoeroticism all that hugging and kissing and taking off shirts - communal baths and showers -blah blah blah. All of that seems a bit queer to me.) So I fail to see how could you spend all that time looking and obsessing about thin fit young men and not look in the mirror from time to time and want to be able to see something similar staring back? I didn’t quite realise before that these football supporters must watch these alpha males exercising -just so they don’t have to. Oh the irony of it all.
by groc at 06:26 PM | Comments (3)
I D
Mistaken Identity Report. The minutes.
by groc at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)