blogjam

Back to work, and the heating in our office has broken. We’re based in an old industrial warehouse with stone floors and very little in the way of insulation, no plumbers are available, and it’s nearly impossible to type. There’s even condensation on my screen. We’re all thinking of going home and refusing to budge until this is fixed. I’m actually shivering.

There’s an interesting piece at TechTV.com which pulls very few punches in it’s criticisms of the blogging phenomemon. Blogger Noah Gray comes in for special criticism, being desribed as an “agoraphobic, manic-depressive living at home who hasn’t had a face-to-face friend in more than four years.” Blimey. Noah’s response is actually quite reasonable is the face of such abuse, unlike The Register’s list of the most virulent flames it received this year.

brrrrrrr. That’s it. I’m off.

A new weblog for Christmas: Chez Lubacov is now online. You’ll have to be able to read Dutch/Flemish to enjoy it, but It’s still worth a visit, if only for the vast selection of hugely entertaining mullet-related links. Welcome aboard.

Anyhow, it’s Christmas Day, I’ve just opened a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and am getting ready to spend Christmas dinner with my good friends John and Fiona, along with their daughter (and my god-daughter) Ruby Yates. I bought her a domain name for her last birthday, but she’s been a bit lax about building her site. Mind you, she’s less than two years old, so I guess it’s understandable. This evening sees a continuation of my annual plan to spend at least some part of Christmas in the least festive surroundings I can find. My venue of choice for 2000? The extremely seedy Kilburn Snooker Club.

And a Merry Christmas, each and every one of you.

Home to the sticks. Wollaston, to be more precise. Lovely. Back in the smoke tomorrow.

Apologies for reproducing this in full, but it’s worth it. Every Wednesday morning the Popbitch newsletter announces itself at my inbox, containing all sorts of salacious and libellous rumours relating to our favourite pop stars. This morning a one-off mail arrived, detailing the most idiotic, imbecilic acts or quotations of 2000. First up, straight in a number 10…..

10) Billie
When asked this year which was the worst of the seven deadly sins, Billie’s response was: “I think murder, that’s deadly isn’t it?”

9) A seven-year-old Britney fan
A seven-year-old boy from Tasmania, Australia, pulled out all of his teeth with pliers. The reason? He wanted the tooth fairy to come and leave him enough money to buy a Britney Spears CD.

8) Puff Daddy
Puffy this year claimed to be part Irish: “My name is Sean Coombs,” he said, “so there’s definitely an Irish connection there.” Eejit.

7) Rene from Aqua
Rene got a bit concerned when he lost his video camera while on tour. Probably because the camera contained extensive close-up footage he’d shot of his penis while taking a piss.

6) Cat Stevens
This year, Cat released an Islamic children’s album. He called it “A is for Allah”

5) Steve Strange
The 80s new romantic legend suffered a slight fall from grace when he was caught shoplifting a Teletubby in Wales.

4) Mel C
This was Mel’s summary of pop music: “Kids are getting ripped off by people who are not talented and can’t cut it live” There was also an incident where Mel reportedly asked Robbie Williams to come out of the Met Bar so they could be photographed together: “Just think what a great picture it would make,” she said. “I’m the queen of pop and you’re the king of pop.”

3) Marc Anthony’s father-in-law
The Latino singer has this tale to tell about his wife’s dad: “Recently his dog jumped over the fence and when my father-in-law went to get him back he found that he had the neighbour’s rabbit in his mouth. My father-in-law took the rabbit and washed it and cleaned it up and put in back in its cage with its ears propped up. A bit later on, he heard screams and went running to see what was wrong. The neighbour told him that the rabbit had died a few days ago and he had buried it and now it had somehow got back in the cage.

2) David Beckham
Not content with calling his rottweillers Snoop and Puffy, Beckham tattooed a huge crucifix on his back and posed for loads of ludicrous photos. Discussing his Esquire shoot, black paper New Nation claimed he was paying tribute to Tupac. “Beckham posed with his head bowed to copy Tupac’s stance on the back of his album Me Against The World. The crucifix and gothic lettering are also Tupac trademarks.” Writer Russel Stevens also claimed that naming Brooklyn was a reference to Tupac rival Biggie Smalls: “That name will always be associated with Notorious BIG – it was his birthplace. It’s like the East Coast-West Coast rivalry is being fought out on Beckham’s back.”

1) Geri Halliwell
After a dental appointment, Geri tried to settle the bill by writing a cheque out to “the dentist”

Of course, none of this could possibly be true. Could it?

Sign up to popbitch at their site. It should be compulsory.

I always use Google for searching the web, but this response just baffled me:

Your search – "claire swire" – did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

• Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
• Try different keywords.
• Try more general keywords.

I find this very hard to swallow (*groan*), as the poor girl is obviously a legend. Luckily I’ve discovered Swire resource. As I said, poor girl.

Metafilter has just re-surfaced after having been offline for the best part of three days. Judging by the reaction, I’m not alone in having found it difficult to cope. My favourite quote:

Dear God. I was stuck at work for 2 whole days, and I had to do, like… work! Viva la metafilter.

Well said, Justin Hankins, whoever you are.

I will stand firm. I shall not buckle or break. I will not be beaten. I will not stop. On the other hand, this can’t possibly go on forever. Random Walks have borrowed my blogjam blog about borrowed blogs borrowing my blogjam blog about Random Walks borrowing my blog about borrowed blogs borrowing my blog from wherever I left it in the first place. If anyone can figure out where this will end up, please let me know.

Kirsty MacColl RIP
I was never a huge fan of Kirsty McColl’s music, but I adored her voice, as she made singing sound more effortless than anyone else in popular music. I once said to Miles Hunt (during his dark days as singer for Vent), that the only Wonderstuff song I had any time for was Welcome To The Cheap Seats, and only because of Kirsty’s vocal contribution. I’m sure he didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue either.

Bim Sherman RIP
This was a real shock – apparently Bim Sherman died of cancer over a month ago, and I’ve only just found out. It speaks volumes for the state of the British music press that more of a fuss wasn’t made, but then again, I don’t read the inkies (sorry, inkie) any more, so I may have missed out. Many years ago I worked in a second hand record shop, and Bim would come in once per week with a stack of his own records to sell, plus those of other artists on On-U-Sound. We originally we gave him pretty good prices, but eventually the store began to overflow with Bim’s unwanted stock, and we had to lower the amount of money we were paying him. He never complained, just took what we were offering and wandered out to the street. I’ve still got some of his albums at home, and will listen to some when I get home.

Sadly missed, both.

Spam. I get lots of it, most of the completely useless variety. You know the type of thing…”Send this email on to ten friends, and within three weeks you’ll be a millionaire, driving a Ferrari and be snorting various Class A substances from between Kylie Minogue’s thighs. Honest.” etc etc and so on. Today I received a circular and, just for a change, it’s actually worth passing on. So here it is.

You may have seen that yesterday that after a seven year parliamentary fight, at last, Stonewall have won an equal age of consent for gays. The speaker of the House of Commons signed the necessary document yesterday and the bill gained Royal Assent last night. As we have come to expect from our good friend Baroness Young (not) she has started a website called www.ageofconsent.org.uk in which she asks you to vote on the issue of age of consent. The idea of course is that at some early stage she will use the statistics from this survey in the public domain, provided of course it is to her advantage. Lets scupper her plans. Please, please go on to this site and register your vote – VOTE NO. The questions are carefully worded to push you to vote yes. Also as importantly please do take time to forward this e-mail on to all your supportive friends and ask them to do the same thing.

And once you’ve done that, you might like to write to the company who designed the site, requesting that the personal details you were obliged to submit regarding your postcode and sexual orientation be deleted from their database: NTK have more details.