Archive for June, 2001

good question

What should I put on the Fence? is a protest site with a difference, detailing as it does one man’s underground battle to ridicule a sign that prevents him from locking his bicycle to the fence where it had previously resided unhindered. The site is very entertaining, and very anonymous. A whois search reveals very little:

Organization:
xxx
xxx xxx
xxx
xxx, xxx xxx
UK
Phone: 0123456789
Fax..: 0123456789
Email: xxx@xxx.com

Is that legal? [Found via lukelog].

ouch

Feeling good? Feeling strong? We’ll soon change that. I have a couple of cautionary tales of genital disaster to recommend. First read this. Then read this. Feeling slightly nausious now? I’m still wincing.

holiday 2001

It’s been a disaster. Some time ago I started arranging this year’s holiday, a trip via the Trans-Mongolian railway from Moscow to Beijing, with a brief stopover in Siberia. I elected to organise everything through a company with over half a century’s experience in arranging travel to Russia, after reading several recommendations on the internet. And today, with less than a month to go before my planned departure date, nothing is organised. They’ve received two booking forms from me, and only one out of 15 calls to the firm has been returned. At one point I even took an afternoon off work to go to the company’s office and try and get things arranged. After waiting in their office for an hour, I was given ten minutes with one of their travel agents, who promised me that everything would be set in stone by the end of that week. That week was the best part of a month ago. On the two occasions that I’ve managed to speak to someone about my situation, they claimed to have no record of me talking to them previously, and asked me to submit another booking form.

I’m fed up, and need a contingency plan.

So where should I go on holiday this year? The choice is yours. The only rules are as follows:

  • I don’t want a beach hoilday.
  • I’d prefer to travel around rather than stay in one place.
  • I don’t drive.
  • I retain the right to ignore your suggestions and do my own thing.

That’s it. My vaction depends entirely on you, so I want good suggestions. If I choose to follow up one of the ideas, the “winner” will receive a postcard from the destination and some kind of fantastic souvenier upon my return.

Get writing!

angel dust

And for a few moments, Kilburn went mad. I came home last night and, not wanting to go through the debacle of cooking myself some dinner, popped into a traditionally English Fish ‘n Chip shop (you know the sort – they’re generally run by Turks). Already at the counter was a hefty looking bruiser waiting to place his order. The shop’s owner nodded to me as he came out from the back of the shop (I’m a regular) and the bruiser exploded.

To the owner: “What the fuck are you doing? I’ve been standing here for two fucking minutes and you haven’t fucking served me yet. And then you start to fucking serve this cunt!”

And then to me: “You cunt! You fucking walk in this fucking shithole and expect to get fucking served before me! Cunt! I ought to fucking kill you! Cunt!”

Then he turns back to the counter and cheerfully places his order. Feeling ever so slightly shaken, I wait for my food to arrive and then leave, only to be confronted by a man running down the centre of Kilburn High Road, eyes agog and mouth agape, screaming at the top of his voice. He’s about thirty yards away, but moving pretty quickly in my direction. I’m ready to move out the way, when he runs at full tilt into the side of a crossing black taxi and tumbles to the floor. He immediately leaps to his feet and, seemingly none the worse for wear, picks up where he left off (the screaming thing and the running thing).

My bus arrives. Ahead of me in the queue to pay the driver is an extremely tall woman, six feet four at the least. With her is a young boy, four or five I guess, and she’s doing her very best to annoy the passengers behind her by paying her fare in 2 pence pieces, 55 of them. Finally she completes the transaction and moves to the back of the bus. The boy has gone upstairs and is screaming is head off. This lasts for three stops, until it’s time for me to get off. Just as I’m stepping down from the bus, there’s a commotion. I turn round just in time to see the boy (having stopped the shrieking and having made his way downstairs) be punched full in the face by the tall woman. The doors close and the bus trundles off. I’m left at the bustop wondering when they added angel dust to our water supply.

can’t spell

A book arrived through the post from Amazon today, Steve Lamacq’s Going Deaf For A Living. For the unititiated, Steve is a BBC Radio One DJ and former NME journalist. I worked with him during the early days of London’s Xfm, before it got taken over by The Man, and wondered what he might have to say about those heady days. And so I quote:

The chart itself would be faxed through from one of the major Oxford Street shops. We then scanned through it, and if we didn’t have some of the records, station all-rounder Frazier had to leg it round the corner to buy them. Sometimes he nearly didn’t make it back in time.

Frazier? FRAZIER? I’ve known the bloke for ten years and he can’t even spell my name! Jeez. To add insult to injury, he recently tried to chat up my flatmate’s girlfriend outside a bar in Islington. That’s stardom for you.

404 porn

I must get round to doing a 404 page, but I’m not sure whose code I want to steal yet. I might just rip off this one.

innocent? who cares?

In US and UK, the principle that an arrested suspect is innocent until proven guilty is a vital part of the law. This troublesome clause doesn’t seem to bother the police force of Saint Pauls, Minnesota, who regularly publish pictures of men caught soliciting prostitutes, including details of the cars they were driving at the time, number plates and all. Of course this is a flagrant abuse of civil liberties and basic human rights, especially when anyone can link to those photos and expose the poor gentlemen further. Er… what was my point again?