Archive for May, 2002

Just received an email from my flatmate Craig:

“OK, so i’m a little sleepy and hungover today and i’m sat at me desk eating a sandwich and someone walks across the front of me and round the back of my chair where he starts to tap the back of my chair with a bit of paper. All i see is a chequered shirt which is usually the preserve of our marketing assistant Rich Willis so i give him the old line “what do you want Cunt?” and look up to see not Rich but one of the directors of PIAS (our parent company) stood looking in bemusement back at me.

I am now sat here in disbelief weighing up my careers options so if anyone has any ideas …”

Can anyone help Craig?

I like the idea of a company offering services whereby you can send pizza to Israeli frontline soldiers. Kinda makes you feel a little closer to the war. I was scouting round for an Arab equivilent, perhaps some firm offering hand-delivered Baba Ghanouj or Falafel, but the nearest I found were packets of Yasser Arafat crisps. Yummy.

Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? My flatmate Chris & I were joined by David and Jonathan last night for the monthly pop quiz at Kilburn’s glamourous Zd Bar, where our extremely impressive 53 points from a possible 60 was enough to see off the competition (bear in mind that only four other teams took part). Our prize? ?20, split four ways. The team who came second won a crate of alcopops with an approximate bar price of close to ?50. Where’s the logic in that? Glory and a little money is nice, but free alcohol is a real prize. And it lasts a little longer.

I was going to relay the entire story of my weekend in Prague in the style of crime writer James Ellroy, but there was really only one period which suited his particular brand of staccato prose. So here goes.

Fraser cruised out. Fraser trawled the streets. He sucked hard on a cigarette. Fraser hit the club. Music fired. Hookers worked the room. They flaunted bruised flesh and stale purfume. Fraser sat with Laurence, Jeff, Joerg. He bounced ice into a glass. Snorted absinthe. The go-go dancer showed her panties and sneered fuck-you. Bottle blonde allure. The four left. They rode a crooked taxi. Rain pissed the concrete.

Anyway, the story of the rest of the weekend with Laurence, Claudia, Elena, Joerg, Jeff, Vittorio, Pollon and (very briefly) David is told in pictures. Here. Much to everyone’s relief, I imagine.

Bollocks to this. I’m off to Prague.

I hate text-messaging. I just can’t see the point of dragging out a two minute conversation over half an hour, but today I’ve begun to see things a little differently. Picture the scene: you’re out in London, the pubs are shutting, but you’ve still got a raging thirst. You don’t know anywhere locally that’s still open, so you skulk off home. Not any more. Just type gone11 into your phone followed by your postcode, send it, and hey! Presto! You’ll have a list of the five nearest bars still serving sent right back to you. Excellent idea.

These Alexa web statistics are confusing. The first time I looked up blogjam a couple of months back, I was the 596,646th most popular site on the Internet. Today I checked again, to discover that I’m now in the top 300,000. I guess it’s down to the kitten generator, which is still serving 10,000 pages a day, but at this rate I’ll have overtaken Amazon by September.

Fantastic. I went for lunch in Henley-On-Thames today, starting off with a swift pint at The Angel public house. And who should be there, strolling up and down the riverbank, feeding the swans and generally looking quite at home thankyou very much? David bleedin’ Hasselhoff, that’s who. The man has extraordinarily long legs.

Midsummer’s Burn initially struck me as a really good idea. Those who signed up compiled a summer-themed CD and sent copies of it to three different webloggers. In return you received three different CDs from a further three webloggers. At least, that’s the theory. In reality my experience has been a little different. Only one of the CDs I sent out was ever acknowledged by the recipient (thanks, Sakaama) and in return I’ve received absolutely nothing. Zero. Nada. Not a single CD. I mean, it’s no big deal really, but it’s kinda sad that people sign up for these things and then can’t be bothered to contribute…

I just posted this over at b3ta, but it has to go here as well. It’s probably the most important Internet site ever. I only wish I had thought of it first.