Election Fever Entirely Fails to Grip UK...

There will be a general election in the UK on 6th May.

The BBC News website devoted a full-width banner headline/picture combo to the story.

The last time I checked, the story was only 6th Most Read, and 5th Most Shared.

Epic Giving-a-damn-about-politics Fail. 

About Face(book)

I'm not sure I fit in at Facebook. Although I understand that social network sites are what you make them, and I'm prepared to use them as tools with which to maintain certain channels of communication, I find myself unable to use Facebook in particular in the manner with which others seem so comfortable.

Before I begin attacking them, its worth noting that my 'friends' on Facebook are all people I'm interested in knowing. There has been no sympathy "friending" (oh, how annoying it is that the spellchecker didn't pick up 'friending', but was reticent about 'spellchecker'), and no-one has yet earned sufficient wrath that I have wished to "de-friend" them.

However, and let's be blunt about this, I really don't give a flying fuck about the fact that a friend of mine is about to head to the pub for the afternoon, or about any other similarly inane snapshots of their life. Why do people think I'd be interested in knowing this? When did it become acceptable to be so fucking bland?

I know, there are stale old arguments which run along the lines of "well, don't read it then". Rubbish; I need to read it in case something genuinely interesting happens, like the wife of a friend, who is very pregnant, gives birth, and an announcement is made through this happily convenient, widely available channel. I don't have a choice, because in among the news that someone is clipping their fucking toenails are nuggets of pure news gold.

So, what is the solution? I'll tell you what: boring flags. Every time someone writes something so mind-numbingly dull that it brings you to tears, simply ping the boring flag. Three boring flags in a 24h period and the user is banned from posting for a day.

Problem solved. Now, I'm off to close the bathroom window...

Brainzzzzz

Dogfight!

Facing south from St Mary's churchyard, Tatsfield. 

Gorillaz in 'rather good' album shocker

News reaches us today that the Gorillaz (the pseudo-artificial pop group side project of Blur's Damon Albarn) appear to have released a third album of surprisingly high quality.

Plastic Beach, featuring such delights as Superfast Jellyfish (probably the best thing since Clint Eastwood) and White Flag, is a sort of big, musical hug. It really could have been different, because the second album, Demon Days, whilst brilliant in places, really wasn't a match for their eponymous first release. The downwards trend, however, has been inverted, and their latest work grabs you in a multi-music-cultural embrace and squeezes until your eyes bulge like a hamster in a child's excessively loving grasp.

Good news, then, for those of us who like their music to wee all over genre definitions. Thank goodness for that. 

A Couple of Things

Anyone familiar with the Sterling currency will recognise the impossibility of the following, at least since the mid 1980s:

The other thing is nothing special, just a slight amusement discovered in a client's offices recently:

Formula 1 is back today

Yeah baby!!!

Lovely Sunset

The Dark Side of Car Enthusiasm

I have a problem. There, I've admitted it, and apparently that's the first step on the long road to recovery.

My particular issue? I judge people by their cars. I know, I know, I've said in the past how much I hate being judged myself, and yet I do it to others! It's terrible. But I still do it...

This morning I was behind an ageing Saab 9-5, in silver, with a tow bar and a British Bulldog sticker on the boot. We entered a slight patch of fog (by which I mean slight - visibility limited to only a few hundred metres) and the foglights came on. Oh dear.

Immediately I imagined the worst, not helped when whoever was behind the wheel decided to stop driving very slowly and drive very fast instead. I jumped to all sorts of conclusions, and these are they:

1. The driver was a man (I know what they're like, after all I am one)
2. He is northern, and in his forties or fifties.
3. He likes caravanning.
4. He doesn't hold with foreign food.
5. He begins broad, sweeping homophobic and racist statements with the words "I'm not being funny, but...". Too right mate, you're not being funny, but not the way you meant it. 
6. The Daily Mail informs his views - he especially harks back to the days when Our Lady Di was still around, though he won't entertain conspiracy stories involving the Royal Family.
7. He'd like the death penalty re-introduced for murder, homosexuality, paedophilia and Jeremy Clarkson.
8. He thinks the BNP are a reasonable political party, and although he would never vote for them he thinks they should have a voice.

All that from a few details of his car and the way he drove. 

Thing is, I can't convince myself I was wrong. Judgemental git. 

It's all in the mind

One of the things I've blogged about to some reasonable extent in the past is my tendency to have a lot more going on behind my eyes than I let on. I'm not talking about intelligence (actually, I have a lot less of that than most people think), but rather my incessant imagination, which regularly runs away with itself.

One of the real world things I repeatedly daydream about is what it'll be like if I'm lucky enough to follow my dreams and become an author. Here are a few of the conclusions I've come to:

1) I'm going to have to get a new wardrobe, since this will be part of the identity of my alter-ego. 
2) I'm going to regain a little of the individuality which has been mercilessly ground out of me by office life.
3) I'd really like to have a room with a view in which I can write.
4) I will be able to justify buying: (a) a small laptop for writing on the move; (b) lots of Moleskine notebooks; (c) more pens. I like pens.
5) I'm going to have to get better at organising myself. 
6) I'll actually have to do some writing from time to time instead of spending my days developing exciting plot lines but never writing stories to go around them.
7) I may have to learn to touch type instead of looking at the keyboard every few seconds.
8) I'll be able to justify finding the perfect keyboard.
9) I'm going to end up spending a lot of time surfing the net. 
10) I think people will be surprised. 
11) I really hope I don't have to do any signings where my friends live. 
12) I'm going to have to learn to take criticism.
13) I'm going to have to learn to edit my stories.
14) I'm going to have to learn how to play piano (nothing to do with writing. Just one of those things).

That's it.