Just unsubscribed from an e-mail alert from a credit card company (no point in saying who), and was sent to a rather strange page. Oh, it was of the normal ilk (elk!), saying "the following e-mail address has been removed from our list", that sort of thing. What really got me was the line afterwards:
"You will no longer hear from us."
I could almost hear the hurt feelings coming out of the screen!
"We know when we're not wanted!" they're saying. "You never liked us anyway. We're going to go and eat worms!"
How very odd.

I woke up during the night needing a drink, and considered the dream I'd been having. It was a strange thing, all about death, and it had spooked me somewhat. But what had seemed so thoroughly logical within the dream in fact turned out to be utter rubbish during my waking moments. I'm not drawing any conclusions, really, just thought it was funny. Funny strange, not funny ha-ha.
In other news (well, not so much 'news' as 'olds'), I'd often wondered about The Angel, Islington, most commonly referred to as a tube station (just 'The Angel'), and as a Monopoly board location. I heard it mentioned last night, and it got me thinking. It's not a normal name for a tube station - they're usually a little more geographical, a little less spiritual. It turns out that the Angel is a geographical boundary after all, describing an area of Islington which housed the famous Angel Inn between the 17th and 19th centuries. The Angel became a coaching inn in 1819, the first staging post north of the city of London, originally having been situated near a toll gate on the Great North Road. The original building was replaced in 1899, and since then it has served as a coffee house and a bank. The Angel legacy lives on, though - next door to the bank is a pub bearing the same name. And the Angel tube station? Down the road, of course...

Ok, a few pics from the Ben Folds gig as promised. The middle shot shows the synth he used extensively, and the last shot shows him conducting the crowd in three part harmony during Not The Same, near the end when he'd whipped us all up into a very polite frenzy. The bass player and the drummer are both there somewhere...

Well, it was always going to be good, wasn't it? There wasn't a chance that it was going to be lame. But that good? No-one knew. Over two hours of classic Ben Folds, including three completely improvised songs (well, one was Rock This B*tch, but so completely morphed and individualised to Sheffield that it was practically brand new). So much energy! The drummer was only playing his third gig with Ben, and yet as the man himself said, it could have been his three hundredth. Totally rocked out One Angry Dwarf, Kate and Underground, songs I really missed the last time he was in town. Beautiful virtuoso performance of Gracie, and hilarious adaptation of B*tches Ain't Sh*t, which is a song I usually don't appreciate from him.
We were so close that there was no chance of an impeded view. No more than 15 feet from the guy, and it rocked. So many things I could tell you, but I won't, because I'd rather just think about it and smile. Pics will follow - I made sure I got a few. And finally a big recommendation to see Clem Snide if you get the chance. He was supporting last time Ben was in town, and he rocked both times.

For the first time since I've started driving to work every day (something I thought I'd hopefully never do, but has become necessary to maintain my sanity), I honestly didn't think I'd make it in one piece this morning. The most ridiculous of the moves perpetrated by my fellow commuters was the guys who drove straight at me down my lane of the road in order to turn the wrong way down a one way street and drive at the people there. Because there was a queue right down the lane to my left, I was left sitting there waiting for a gap to open in that traffic so he could break the law even further. And then he thanked me. Wonders shall never, ever cease.

On a brighter note, we're off to see Ben Folds tonight, due to my wife's brilliance in obtaining tickets. For those of you who are not regular blog readers, this is a huge event for me, and the first time I've ever been to see someone for the third time. In fact, I've never seen anyone else twice before, so I'm sure you can understand the enormity of this event. I will attempt to use my lovely cameraphone to get a pic and post it here at some point, just like last time a couple of years back. I will, however, not be taking any video - the odd pic is ok, I reckon, but a whole piratey vid thing is a bit disrespectful to a man who plays so hard for you that his fingernails have to be taped on. Bring it on...

On a slightly lighter note, this article amused me if only for the quality of the picture used to represent Mr Dacre. Clearly upset at the Mail editor lashing out at the BBC, the editors of the news website have chosen a particularly flattering picture of him to illustrate their story. A delightful little dig...

Big Brother Racism
Normally I wouldn't comment on any issues that I view as inflammatory, and as regular readers will know I've only broken this self-imposed rule a couple of times in the past. I'm worried, though, about the recent turn of events in the Celebrity Big Brother house, where one of the contestants (in case you missed it, or aren't living in the UK or India) was accused of racially abusing another, the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty.
My reaction to the number of complaints, and the way that some of the comments have been singled out, swings between two extremes, and can settle on neither because I don't think that I have a full understanding of the accused's character. On the one hand, I think the complaints are fully justified. The massive street protests in India (including the od favourite of effigy burning) are another thing, but then that's simply because we wouldn't be doing it that way here, so it's unusual to me - we're just too damn polite to actually stand up for ourselves most of the time. But on the whole, when I hear the comments and see the way Shilpa has been treated, I'm pretty disgusted (though not wholly surprised, a view which has developed over my years in the wider world - more on this below).
The other extreme is concern. That sounds a little mild-mannered to be an 'extreme', but it is. I'm worried that this is going to become another bandwagon, that the issue will be hijacked by those wishing to make a point not central to the issue. The discussion of racism and the underlying current of this social problem is all good and well, and if this situation brings the issue to the forefront and forces us to confront the ignorance and bigotry in this country, then all the better. The problem comes when this issue is used as a stick with which to beat the UK, for other perceived crimes (and real ones). The crime, of course, is the nature of our foreign policy, which is imperialistic and out of line with the general wishes of the public. We have had a chance to fix this, but because it was more comfortable to do so, the majority left Labour in power. Ever since we invaded Afghanistan, and then went after Iraq in the name of freedom (a pen-name for the otherwise anonymous 'Mr Oil Greed'), the UK has been a target of hatred. Believe me the hatred existed before Tony Blair gave extremists an excuse to vent it (and a direction, by aligning ourselves with the beligerently stupid American George W), but since it has become normal to hate the UK and America, and the reasons have become more and more mudied by politics, any excuse to have a go at the British is seized upon.
I don't mean to sound like we should be feeling sorry for ourselves. We have no-one to blame but our own voting public. But I am concerned that this stance seems to have risen to the level of international politics, with India seeking to question the UK about the Shilpa issue. Racism happens every day, in practically every country (with the possible exception of Iceland), and governments don't get involved. India's excuse this time is that the racism is being given an airing, and that the goverment has a responsibility to step in and halt it. This is, in the case of, say, holocaust denial, perfectly reasonable - not every viewpoint deserves a view, because not every viewpoint is based on an intellectual decision. The idea that a citizen of the UK automatically deserves the right to spread hatred under the banner of freedom of speech demeans the very basis of the concept, which is nothing like 'freedom of hatred'. However, in this case, I rather think the comments need to be aired so that the likes of middle England, peaceful in its ignorance of these issues, can be made aware that they exist, and can be disgusted enough to try to make things better. My point here is elucidated by the case of a Shipwrecked (another Channel 4 program) contestant, who was heard to utter racist remarks in the first few days of the show. Channel 4 claims it wants to continue airing the series on the basis that later on this contestant's views change. I agree, therefore, with their decision, because it's worthwhile showing that the ignorant can be educated, that those who hold these views are not entirely beyond hope, and not entirely acting out of malice.
Before I went to university, I never really encountered racism. To me, a comfortably-off, white, middle-class male, it was a historic thing. The N-word was banned quite publicly from the playground when I was a kid, and although the war wasn't quite done, we all knew at some level that the fight had gone out of the fascists. It was a false view of the world, but it was comfortable. I attended a private all-boys school for my secondary level education, and it was a fairly well-mixed place culturally (even including kids from across the financial spectrum due to a thorough scholarship scheme). I wouldn't say it was a perfect mix, because we didn't have stupid people there, but the racial mix was pretty healthy. I left this environment firmly believing that racism was dead as a concept, because there really wasn't any at school. Yes, there were cultural divides, but that's just tribality - skin colour didn't matter. But when I left that little bubble and experienced the outside world for the first time, I was shocked to discover that it's full of bigotry and racism. It still disturbs me now.
I'm not entirely sure what my point is here. I think I wanted to say that I'm still unsure whether the way in which this issue has been dealt with really is right. Jade is ignorant, as is this girl on Shipwrecked, and they're not alone. Social education is the only cure, and ignoring the issue by shutting down Big Brother isn't going to help.
Having said that, I still can't stand that bloody program...

They (the ubiquitous 'they') say that everyone has one good book inside them. Everyone. Who am I to argue with a universal rule like that? It does raise some interesting issues, though...

For instance, putting aside the kind of accident that Bill Bailey's character Manny had in episode one of Black Books, this means that in effect I should be able to produce one decent manuscript. I feel this may be a problem, since I do not, in fact, have one decent book inside me.

I wonder, therefore, if I could strike some sort of deal to keep my end of the bargain. You see, I have many books in me. They spill out of my brain and through both pen and keyboard to be recorded for as long as the media on which they are written will last (saying 'for all eternity' there would be a blatant lie).

Could I, lacking a certain amount of quality (and therefore unable to tick the box marked 'good'), make this up with sheer quantity? Could I produce 100 books, all only 1% good? What if it was discovered that I had produced a book which exceeded the quality of its siblings, and was in fact 2% good - could I cut the number of required manuscripts to merely 99?

Such thoughts trouble me as I shower.

The nice thing about Blogger is that you can always edit posts if you don't like what you said, or if it makes you feel silly. Just an observation, nothing more...
I reached a milestone today at work - the first Post-It note tacked to the bottom of my monitor reminding me action is needed on one of the spreadsheets. Time to get out...

Having recently ranted about the way in which shirts I bought from Marks and Spencer were packaged (private rant, not blogged), it pleases me to note that they are at least making the effort to go carbon neutral. Reminds me that I need to sort out neutralising the car and our flights this year.

Ok, I'm not the most politically correct person in the entire world, but as I sat watching The Simpsons this evening, I was rather shocked to see that they'd shown the episode including the attempted assassination of Saddam Hussein. Now, normally this wouldn't be anything to worry about, but if you have a look at the dateline on this post and check out the news for the week (assuming you're not reading this this week), you'll find out that the man himself was executed for crimes against humanity only a few days ago. For some reason, it just doesn't seem right.