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January 31, 2006
SMS speak to me Tom
How cool is this?
It's cooler than a penguin in the Artic wearing a leather bikers jacket and shades smoking french cigarettes -that's how cool.
by groc at 08:56 PM | Comments (1)
January 30, 2006
comic book PSAs
A series of public service announcements from comic books on Flickr.
(Today I was thinking of what would almost be totally guaranteed to get in the Flickr 'Explore Interestingness' pages - and it had to be cats and iPods. Unsurprisingly - there are quite a few cats and iPods pictures. Now if they can combine that with a flower macro and a sunrise/sunset n the same frame - it would be the most popular picture ever.
by groc at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2006
Mmmm - suspicious
So George Galloway has been under investigation for `serious fraud’* has he? Interesting that. - I mean it wouldn't be anything like politically motivated revenge for having made the US senate look vindictive and foolish would it? It’s also odd that no one has bothered to investigate the links that there is between Iraq, various Saudi oil families and the Bush family. I’m sure all that would prove to be very interesting for everyone...
Meanwhile: Telegraph loses Galloway libel appeal.
Although Galloway did lose appeal when he wore that bright red leotard.
*Is there such a thing as the Trivial Fraud Office?
by groc at 01:48 PM | Comments (1)
I have just one question
Apparently there's going to be a massive shake up in the incapacity benefits system soon.
But I have one question:
just where the hell are all these millions of jobs going to magically appear from?
Because if there is so much easily available work around then why isn’t there zero% unemployment now? With masses of vacancies still begging to be filled? And if there are so many people in work -presumably all paying taxes and their NI contributions - how is there this ‘pensions crisis’ they keep banging on about? The plain fact of the matter is - there isn't.
In case you don't know any recent history - one of our most beloved *choke* *cough* *spit* leaders - Mrs Thatcher in the mid 1980s had the fantastic idea of closing down hundreds of coal mines - and in doing so devastated whole towns of mining communities leaving absolutely nothing in their place. Whole generations where simply left to rot -struggling by on the dole. For years and years the Tory Government sneakily allowed more and more people to go onto Incapacity Benefit - because they then slipped off the official Unemployment figures (which they were always fiddling with anyway - always downwards, downwards, downwards.)
Not only that -but in all these years the larger corporations have been increasingly outsourcing much of their workforce offshore to places like India and China -you know, the whole globalisation thing. For a long time I’ve thought the only thing the British did to make any money is to go around selling each other their houses and run up huge credit card bills, or else work in call centres selling loans and mortgages to each other. Especially since we don’t seem to actually make or produce anything to sell to the rest of the world. So I ask again - where are all these millions of new jobs that these older men and women who’ve been out of work for a long time going to come from? If the Government was making a case that the hours of the working week were going to be reduced by law (instead of being flaunted - isn‘t it the case we work the longest hours in Europe?) - then maybe there might be more work to go around? (I'll wager most business leaders/employers will insist that this couldn't possibly work. Not that any of them have ever bothered to try it or anything.)
I can’t help thinking this is another blatant case of our Government reacting to ‘public opinion’ (which really in essence amounts to what the news media decides to conjure up) without ever actually thinking things through properly. Another PR exercise that’s being made into what will prove to be an unworkable policy. There’s been an awful lot of those recently.
by groc at 01:10 AM | Comments (2)
January 24, 2006
arf!
by groc at 10:46 PM | Comments (1)
my mpg player
Back in mid-December I bought myself a ickle mpg player - it was only £40 and I couldn't resist. It's great. It acts just like a thumb drive you don't need a dumb media player monster thing to load it up with anything, although I think you can use Windows media player to load stuff onto it but I can't see the point. It runs on a normal AAA battery, it also records.
and at the moment I am so glad I didn't bother looking at the iPod shuffle. Which I don't like the looks off. It's lucky Apple have managed to keep this latest debacle out of the press -after all the teething problems tthey had with the easily scratchable and breakable nano.
by groc at 01:06 PM | Comments (2)
dumb search query
OK - who types in a Search: query for 'Demonstrations, protests and action targeted at major organisations' on this blog?
Are the CIA, interpol or MI5 taking an interest in my blog all of a sudden?
Oh well makes a change from comment spammers searching to see if their tricks have worked, which btw 'Bzzzt ' no it hasn't.
by groc at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
subverting youth
W00t! It's like something they thought up for B3TA.
I heart the cheesy animations in the videos too.
I'm a fan.
by groc at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2006
a random fashion thought
You know how I’m obsessed with sci-fi and such - well I’ve been watching the repeats of UFO on ITV4 and downloading early 1960s episodes of Doctor Who - and what not - and they all give predictions and impression of what they thought we’d all be wearing right about now - silver spacesuits, Nehru jackets, collarless shirts, plastics and all manner of glamorous things - but what they never envisioned was just how utterly boring and stiflingly bland most of all the clothes would be in 2005/6. This week for the first time in years I picked up a copy of ID and after flipping through it was so bored by the fashion section I quickly put it back down again. Likewise today I’ve got a Sunday supplement with a fashion section - and again big yawn. Everything is so safe and all so tediously retro. It was 5 or 6 years ago I was moaning in my blog about how too long the 70s revival had been going on already - but it never stopped - it’s *still* ongoing! And with dumb 70s revivalist programmes like ‘Life on Mars’ - it’s getting set to last even longer.
*deep sigh*
by groc at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2006
Gorilla
Police have confiscated Pete Burn's Gorilla fur coat.
PS. I've just found out that the Times is running a Big Brother blog - it's quite hilarious.
"I grow worried about Michael Barrymore
Watching him on the hightlights last night, I began to wonder if he ought to be on television at all. It is not right. He is an old man in a woolly hat, weeping alone in a shed and I worry that he is going to just curl up and die, like an old, abandoned pet dog. And then Pete Burns will come and sift through his sad carcass and wear his head as a hat."
Posted by Hugo Rifkind
I reckon that's because, out in the real world, both women have so little to do they spend literally all day putting on make-up. Then they put more make-up on the make-up, hot-tong their lips, back-comb their eyelashes, use lip-plump on their jawbones and drink gallons of J-Lo's discontinued and overpoweringly vanilla-y perfume "Glo".
Now they're relatively natural, you can actually see the faces of women, rather than an orange rictus mask of idle boredom, and peevish discontent at not being married to Robbie Williams."
Posted by Caitlin Moran
by groc at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2006
Brokeback pudding mountain
Everytime I hear about this movie - I'm reminded of that Southpark episode ('Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls') where they have a indie film festival and the films are mainly about 'gay cowboys eating pudding'. (I thought I might be the only one but google says not so.)
by groc at 10:34 AM | Comments (2)
wha... iPod lessons?
I was led to believe that the biggest selling point of the wretched things was that they were easy to use by even the most brain-dead fashion victim.
Selfridges charging £65 for iPod lessons. They've obviously cottoned on to how easily a mac or iPod user can be parted from their money.
by groc at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
Terry Gilliam Interview.
GILLIAM: Not necessarily. I think it has to do with the fact that a longer living system becomes more complex. Again, South Park came out of something that was still forming itself. I think there are moments when television systems – or any system for that matter – are young and haven't formed properly, and there's room for lots of interesting and original stuff. Then things become more and more top-heavy with executives who are trying to guarantee the success of things.
by groc at 04:50 PM | Comments (1)
January 06, 2006
oh god
(I found this by accident - I was trying to find a copy of 'the Frozen Dead')
"The God that wasn't there" (free downable movie). 'Merikan Christian Fundamentalists are so scary. In fact in a lot of ways I find them hard to tell apart from fundamentalist Muslims. That they both happily believe in an forthcoming apocalyptic war - should worry us all.
Oh, by the way, that apocalypse mentioned in Revelations. Er... the Rapturists have all missed the boat by a couple of thousand years. The prophecy was referring to the fall of the Roman Empire. Sorry guys, it's already happened. Get over it. There'll be no suddenly disappearing to be taken up to see your invisible sky god for you.
By the wherever did that loopy notion come from in the first place? Was it an idea they nicked from Star Trek or something?
by groc at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)
some gay stuff
D Irelsnd has some good ideas for Gay TV.
This morning I watched 'Mysterious Skin' - which stars that young actor who was the kid 'Third Rock from the Sun' and that young actress who played 'Dawn' in 'Buffy'. It was Directed by Gregg Araki - and although it was hardly a barrel of laughs (it's very dark) - I thought it was good.
I must be a Gregg Araki fan.
by groc at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)
January 04, 2006
Was someone in Govt. reading my last post?
This is truly scary. What the fu*k is going on in this country that they're even daring to have ideas like this?
We really are sleepwalking towards a high tech police state. Once we've all got ID cards and obliged to carry them every time we step out of the house - and if we don’t have a car so that they can track every single journey you make - you’ll probably have to swipe your card on every bus or train trip you take - with a CCTV camera matching your face to your ID card profile. (and your baggage will be routinely searched) [If you live in London and have an season Oyster card for the Underground - you're already forgone any privacy.]
They’re already working hard on making face recognition from CCTV cameras in Town centres a reality, and once they've got every one's face in the UK on the National database - rather than just mugshots of known criminals... the number of false-positives is set to climb through the roof.
All in all it's a funny way to 'protect' our freedoms by taking them all away from us.
by groc at 01:43 AM | Comments (1)