October 2006 Archives

Cerebral colossus Gore Vidal has made a shock move to purchase West Ham football club this weekend. Speaking exclusively to Globaleyes, Vidal told us that he is keen to take control at the embattled London club and is 'relishing the challenge of dragging the Hammers back to the pinnacle of the footballing world'.

This news comes hot on the heels of the arrival of two high-profile Argentinian political science students to West Ham who, some say, have disrupted the dressing room with their unorthodox views on the role of China in the 21st century geo-political landscape.

A trio of inebriated thirty something nerds, struggled vainly for two hours last night to turn on an early prototype of the Playstation 3. Monged beyond all reason, the three software programmers used every means at their disposal to play a game of 'Tiger Woods Golf', but were thwarted in their efforts by a panoply of cables, an obstreporous television and an enormous bag of weed.

'Those aren't real nails' says fat, odious foul-mouthed, fear-mongering, low-life, drug-addicted scumbag.

Right-wing American shock-jock Rush Limbaugh took time out from his busy schedule of sacrificing chickens and small children to the Dark Lord of Hades, whoring for the Republican party and desperately trying to hide the fact that he is, in fact, everything he professes to hate this morning, to cast doubt on the authenticity of Jesus' crucifixion.

'I don't buy it for a second', spluttered Limbaugh, whilst masturbating furiously over a computer generated picture of George W. Bush in fish-nets and high-heels. 'He's wriggling around on that cross like a spastic worm, arms flapping all over the place. He's faking it. Faking it! He's a professional liar! Those wounds on his hands? Ketchup! Nails through the feet? Bought them in a joke shop! Crown of thorns? Crown of cotton wool more like. Spear through the side? Barely tickled him, the con-artist. And I ain't the only one that says so either. The Koran says the same thing...'

Last Friday, at a family wedding, I was introduced to one of the editors on the new James Bond movie 'Casino Royale'. Being quite a Bond fan, I was very keen to hear his thoughts on the new flick. This isn't the first one that he's worked on, so he was a mine of fascinating stories. What got me most excited was that he told me about a scene from the upcoming movie, which if it makes it to the final cut, might just be the most extreme thing seen yet in any Bond movie. And it's pure Ian Fleming.

More Bond than Bond

The Brosnan era was a curious thing: whilst the Irishman's performances got better and better, the scripts got worse and worse. Die Another Day was possibly the worst of all the twenty Bond movies. It was truly execrable stuff, worse even than A View to a Kill. As if this wasn't bad enough, Matt Damon's Bourne movies shat all over Bond. They were cleverer, grittier, cooler. And they had that key ingredient that the Brosnan movies didn't have: a decent score. John Barry's signature music has been badly missed since The Living Daylights.

I can't speak to the score of the new Bond flick (worryingly they've persisted with David Arnold again) but it does seem that they've made a decent, honest effort to make an Ian Fleming movie. The key to this, for me at least, is that Casino Royale contains a scene from Fleming's original novel which I never thought would make it to the big screen.

We're fans of Carl Sagan here at Blather. Well, at least some of us are. That talentless hack over on the main page wrote a piece some time ago about Sagan's wonderful book 'The Demon Haunted World'. In that piece, the rat-faced goon mentioned Sagan's much-loved and never-bettered science televisual opus 'Cosmos'. Prior to now, Cosmos has only been available on a pricey Region 1 DVD set.

But now, the good souls at Carl Sagan's Cosmos blog have made all eleven original episodes available.

So, it's finally started: the great cleansing of YouTube. It was only a matter of time really. I had often wondered when the lawyers would get busy and start clamping down on shared video content. 'This week' it seems, is the answer.

+SueTube+

Two news stories have heralded what I am sure is the beginning of the end for the joyous wonder that was YouTube. Says the BBC Tech section:

'An independent website has been told to stop putting footage of FA Premiership goals on the video website YouTube. NetResult - a firm monitoring the internet on behalf of the Premier League - emailed a warning to the website, 101greatgoals.blogspot.com. It told the website it was "infringing" Premier League copyright. Links from 101greatgoals to YouTube were thought to have been disabled by YouTube itself but other links to Premiership goals stayed in place.'

Super-trooper Greg Palast is down with the homies and (insert embarrasing white boy cliche here) upon the momentous release of his Armed Madhouse Remixed. 'Armed Madhouse' is Palast's new book, a rip-roaring investigation into the sordid underbelly of Bush's America.

And now he's asked DJ's to take sections of it read by various luminaries (Larry David for example) and remix them to breakbeat perfection. Palast says:

'You want to listen to this: the best of Armed Madhouse, the bestseller, turned into disturbingly hot dance tracks. Click here to Listen to Greg Palast, Amy Goodman, Larry David, Jello Biafra and other troublemakers reading Armed Madhouse and put to the beat. Here are some who already have. Then pass it on.'

Are you a bare-faced liar? Can you slither, oooze, worm and crawl your way through the day, with the express intention of ripping people off for every cent they have? Can you bring people to a mould-covered, fit-to-be condemned shit hole of a flat and keep a straight face while you say it's worth seven hundred a month? Are you willing to sell your very soul to Satan himself and dedicate your existence to being a unctuous, sub-human shitehawk in the pay of other unctuous, sub-human shitehawks?

Are you an illiterate, dishonest, money-grasping shit of a human who can dedicate his life to a profession populated by the kind of odious, venal scumbags that make hitmen look like aid workers?

(YOUR BEDROOM) Geek-rage reaches almost apocalyptic levels with allegations that EA Games' new blockbuster 'Battlefield 2142' is designed to rummage through your hard drive and mine data which can then be sold to third-parties (presumbaly marketing agencies). This presumbaly so that you can be bombarded with adverts - as well as rocket-propelled grenades.

Now, I'm not a gamer. I don't dislike games and I even owned a Playstation a few years back, but I'm not a fan of hovering over a plasma-screen nipple, whiling my life away screaming at small pixelated characters. But a few months back a friend of mine (who is a whopping great game nerd) introduced me to Battlefield 2. It's stunning. And more addictive than crack-cocaine. The first truly extraordinary gaming experience that I ever had: real-time, on-line collaborative gaming with breathtaking, entirely immersive environments.

An article from last week's Sunday Times reports that 'an independent commission set up by Congress with the approval of President George W Bush may recommend carving up Iraq into three highly autonomous regions'. There's nothing new in this idea. Globaleyes reported this on January 8, 2004.

At that time my opinion was that this was an appaling idea: hacking a country into pieces to suit the needs of an imperial conquerer. However, recent exposure to two extraordinary books and, of course, the consideration of the growing sectarian hatred in Iraq, has altered my view on this matter.

'It just works' they said. Sorry lads, but it doesn't. The last 24 hours have been testing me to the very limits of my patience. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I'm a recent convert to the quasi-religious grouping that is 'the mac bore'. I was a hacked-off PC user who jumped on the Apple Macintosh bandwagon. And I'd been a very happy boy. That is, until yesterday, when it started crashing and dying. And, I'm not alone. It appears that I'm one of thousands around the world who have been lied to by Apple's 'It Just Works' marketing crap.

Some websites go for the big idea. They try to pull down everything they can, from everywhere they can and slap it all into one place. Success rates vary of course. Some, like Znet, get it right. Others don't.

But then there are the other types of websites. The ones that just have one simple idea. And they make you laugh like a drain. Take, for example, the simply wonderful 'Squirrelwithtits.com', 'Oh my Word this tune is annoying', 'Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii', 'Badger, Badger, Badger', 'Your all Gay' and, lest we forget, the one, the only, the unforgettable 'Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan'.

(DUBLIN) Christian fundamentalists burnt a copy of the Koran today in a ceremony designed to, according to Reverend Maggie Kelp, 'show those heathen, Godless bastards what's what!' Muslims the world over responded in typical fashion by shrugging their shoulders and saying 'meh'.

Blather's award -winning uber-scoop Filthy Hack contacted a local Dublin Imam to ask for his reaction to the provocative act. He replied 'Yeah, and?'. 'But they called Allah a false prophet' countered Hack. 'So? Doesn't matter what they say. We know better' said the Imam, sprinkling a spoonful of sugar into his green tea.

I've been considering buying a domain name for a (notional) start-up and decided to look into the costs of getting the name I want. And I've been left with my jaw hanging down. Take for example this domain name search at hosting 365.ie, which I carried out just to see the differences between the costs, using a random name: 'weeeee'...

weeeee.org is 8.95 for one year. weeeeee.ie is 69.95. Just take a second to look at that. One is less than a tenner. The other is seventy euros.

'You served our Roy and Mick in the Saipan Wars...'

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