Won't somebody please think of the children

Gah.

I can talk. But. What is it about the internet that allows people to voice opinions that would seem a bit OTT in Mein Kampf? For a while I’ve been tracking Speak You’re Branes, an amusing if throw-your-head-at-a-wall-sobering collection of comments scraped from the barrel of the BBC’s Have Your Say word vomitorium, then exposed to public ridicule. Funny. It’s just a pity this seems to be the tip of the iceberg we're making light of here.

(Also, what is it about the internet that allows the continual recycling of clichés, eh? Answers on a postcard...)

Anyhoo, my point is that what should be a valid exercise in democracy just makes you hate people even more. We're just an infinite number of monkeys shitting on to our keyboards.

It’s not enough that the fuckers kickoff about Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand without having actually heard what they are supposed to be offended by. Now they are appalled that our children are being subjected to disabled people on TV. In their own living rooms. It’ll be black people next.

Take these considered words from concerned parent "Barry":

"Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on Cbeebies [Cerrie Burnell, who has one arm that ends at her elbow and chooses not to use a prosthetic limb, the cowbag] may scare the kids because of her disability?

"I didn't want to let my children watch the filler bits on the bedtime hour last night because I know it would have played on my eldest daughter's mind and possibly caused sleep problems... and yes, this is a serious post."

I think your views might scare your children. Also, as a mate pointed out, the Paralympics must blow your mind.

And don't think the irony of me moaning on about folk on the internet moaning has escaped me.

Whatever floats your boat

My sister works for an unnamed museum that houses a lot of nautical paraphernalia (it does have a name). They collect models of ships. I found a model of a ship on the internet. It is made from food. Mostly meat. Some pastry. She decided to put it forward as a serious piece for the acquisitions department to consider, sending them a rather sincere note. The good thing about an email is that you can keep a straight face:

Dear Steve and John,

Would the Museum be interested in acquiring one of these? My brother suggested it. I think it's long term conservation may be an issue, but it's a very interesting piece. Maybe I should recommend the plans to Jerry?

http://www.supersizedmeals.com/food/article.php/20080212-The_Meat_Ship

Best wishes,

Here's the reply she got:

that's really quite unpleasant.

Suicide is painless

What do you say when the least mentally qualified of your friends asks you for a character reference for voluntary work for the Samaritans?

Oi!

I wanna work for top topping preventers, the Samaritans innit. Before they'll let me stop people being mental & shit, I need to prove that I'm not some kind of weirdo. Is it alright to put you down as a vouching for type person yah?

Ta.

I guess (hope) that, in reflection, callers will consider their lot to not be too bad after all. "Could be worse..."

For the love of God

That’s the problem with God, he’s always been there first.

The other day, I had a brainwave – God should have a blog. Or at least a representative on earth to write that blog for him. And that representative could be me. I am on earth, after all. I was made in his image, dammit.

I came up with the name “Dear God”, a title that could lend itself to either/both of two concepts:

a) A problem page where conundrum-sufferers can consult the most divine of agony aunts to consider a whole host of concerns.
b) The ongoing sufferings of a clinically depressed deity of sulk wallowing around his bedsit flat after his wife has left him for Hindu god Ganesha (“that elephant-faced bastard”).

Then I discover someone (God, apparently) has only gone and done exactly that. Well, a) at least. Sort of. And their pictures are prettier and all.

Dear God is like a dark tunnel full of tramp piss* on the information super highway to enlightenment. It’s a stagnant oxbow lake of the internet that diverts the course of the blogosphere with a dam of dogma. On it, readers share prayers (shudder) and confessions (great, but never as sordid as you would like) in the flaccid hope that God might get round to reading them. “Email in – send it to The Big Guy”, they yelp (like it doesn’t just go straight to his spam folder). Oh, did I mention they have pretty pictures. Often with little or no connection to the subject matter. But they are pretty.

Take Bobby from Canada, for example. He ditched his missus and began his mission to boff the brains out of an old school friend, only a year later to wind up drunk, penniless and homeless, snivelling in a corner of what presumably must be an internet café seeking spiritual advice.

God, I prayed you would open a door for me to get out of all this, but things worsened,so I stopped that prayer. Sin has taken me way farther than I ever wanted to go and now, it seems as though there is no escape.

Bum. Only the photo department didn’t get the memo. Their idea of Bobby’s plight is this:



Which is a man who has come home from work to discover his wife is cheating on him with another woman, a prelude to a glossy porn ménage à trois involving said man, the wife and the open-minded lover – not really the same problem. In fact, probably rubbing salt into poor Bobby’s wounds.

And God’s verdict?

God Says:
January 8th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
great photo.

* Piss update – another grizzly dude pissing in public, this time on the wall of the small pub/eatery in Liverpool St station, next to Upper Crust. At 4pm on a Saturday.

I Spam Legend

AdSense has outshone itself once again. This sponsored link appeared in my spam folder:

Vineyard Spam Salad - Combine grapes, spam, peapods and onions in large bowl

Bravo. See also:

French Fry Spam Casserole - Bake 30-40 minutes

Jesus is my bus driver

One for the sloganeering Agnostics out there (pick a side, you fuckers). Brilliant.

Love in the time of So I Married An Axe Murderer

Romance isn’t dead. Nope. In fact, you can order your copy for as little as £3.91, with a two-week free trial.

With Valentine’s Day lurking around the corner like your pretty flatmate and her meat cleaver-wielding Italian boyfriend, it’s probably a good moment to take Christian Bale’s advice and “think for one fucking second” (Yeah, get me being topical). Good job LOVEFiLM is here to sort your life out:

Enjoy a romantic night in this Valentine's with LOVEFiLM.

Now imagine your girlfriend/boyfriend’s reaction when you tell them not to bother booking a table at the local Pizza Express because you’ve got Cocktail in. That look of discombobulation, subsiding to state of utter revulsion sloshing about in a blank stare of disappointment – that’s the face of true love, that is.

Best get your rental list in shape pronto and hope LOVEFiLM don’t try and fob you off with that Jeremy Clarkson DVD you've had skulking in your “low priority” titles for some time now. Like they always do. Bastards.

AdSense and sensibility: part 2

AdSense has excelled itself today:

No more Bloating and Gas

Read about how I found relief from bloating and bloated stomach.
www.Fangocur.com/Bloating

AdSense and sensibility

Evil: smacks of black and white thinking. Back in the days of George W Bush, that seemed to be fine. But Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto is open to interpretation. Surely having a butcher’s at my email, for example, represents a grey area.

Not that I mind. The Google ad generator (AdSense, apparently) in the side bar of the Gmail interface is generally more interesting than the actual email I’m reading anyhoo.

AdSense works by prying into the content of your emails and tantalising you with gaudy baubles of marketing guff, usually hawking the sort of tat that killed Woolworths. Imagine Derren Brown manning a jumble sale stall. If you really must, read about it here.

On the plus side, I can now pretend that adverts are being beamed into my personal mind from some future dreamt up by Philip K Dick. Like in Minority Report when Tom Cruise gets stalked by Gap (Gap Kids would be more, er, fitting). Only more low rent. And therefore not so threatening, just funny.

A recent double-whammy:

Michelle O's hair in secs
Get her look now using quick, easy v realistic, new type of weave!
www.simiweave.com

Cherl Cole Hair Extension
Want Celebrity Cheryl Cole Hair? London Professional hair extensions
www.lucindaellery.com

They’ve got my number. I also got clothes-lined by this heavy-hitting tag-team side-lining the an email:

Birthday Cake
Delicious personalised cheesecakes direct - go on it'll make the day
www.cheesecake.co.uk

10 Skinny Rules
I lost 9 lbs. in 11 days, just by following these 10 simple rules.
FatLoss4Idiots.com

Possibly suggesting that you can have your cake and eat it.