Suck my tweet

Unless you’ve been locked up in an Austrian basement for the last 24 years you will be at least vaguely aware of Twitter. It’s a microblogging site where fuckwits yap on about the inane meaninglessness of their lives in the futile hope that someone, somewhere out there isn’t too busy guffing about their self to take notice. (This SuperNews! cartoon pretty much sums up my feelings). Fat chance. Unless you’re Stephen Fry, that is.

Stephen Fry gets stuck in a lift and the whole world takes a deep breath. Stephen Fry accidentally posts a picture of a jar of Nutella, the sandwich spread that keeps the cardiology department in Italian hospitals in business, and twitheads fall over themselves to come up with the most vacuous comment.

trinityrs on March 23, 2009
I love nutella!

mongooseson on March 23, 2009
Not my cup of Darjeeling thanks.

GertrudeSusanne on March 23, 2009
Nutella - yummy! If I had been Paddington Bear, that´s what I´d have taken on my journey to the UK :o)) Ta 4 all the great piccies xxx

“I took a massive dump in my brother’s jar LMAO ;-)” I mean it’s not even a giant 5kg tub of the hazelnutty chocolaty goo.


Now that is worth tweeting the fuck out of. (And worryingly, should anything happen to me in the next few months and I become martyred by the 24-hour rolling depression channel that is The News, this is the image of me that will no doubt be seared into the retinas of viewers. In case of emergencies, always keep your kith and kin updated with a fairly recent and decent looking picture of your mug. Thanks Christine.)

Twitter is just too needy. For me, two blog posts in a month is a pretty good figure. I did better than Faith No More, who manged an almost 11 year long gap between posts. But Twitter demands your almost constant attention and I just don’t have that level of commitment. (I notice, for example, very few entries in Barack Obama’s Twitter feed since early Novermber – are you tell me he has something better to do?). “Feed me!” the cute little bird chatters, before pecking out your eyeballs.

My advice: leave the narcissism to the people that have made an artform out of it. I speak, of course, of Russell Brand, a man who would not exist if he fell over in a woods and there was no one there to marvel at/be outraged by him doing it. Here’s just a few snippets from his feed:

"My booky wook is number 6 on the New York Times best seller list. Alas, i want it to be number 1. Please go and intimidate bookshop staff."

Followed by:

"No.1 in the New York Times best seller list is "My Wookie Book" by some arsehole called Chewbacca. We must usurp this illiterate goon."

That and like I couldn’t condense all that down into 160 characters. If you're going to write something that nobody is going to read, at least do it properly.

Police, Camera, Action!

Last summer, Google went around 25 cities in Britain, drive-by shooting 22,369 miles of road – taking pretty pictures, I mean. Sewn together, these 2D images have created Street View, not so much a 3D map of Britain but a moment trapped in amber – complete with fully-functioning Woolworthses. So it goes.

Aside the comical spottings (although Google Earth might have better comedy potential), there are security concerns.

Some people with a less-than-informed grasp of technology (and perhaps reality) (goaded no doubt by the, sigh, Daily Mail) have noted that this is a breach of civil liberties and now, using this tool, anyone can stalk you remotely from anywhere in the world. Or at least the you from eight months or so ago when the photos were taken. If they know your address. And you were there at the time the photo was taken. And they’ve not got better things to be doing like, y’know, rearranging their socks into alphabetical order or something.

Me, I’m just miffed there’s a Winnebago parked outside my gaff, obscuring the view.

Sidestepping privacy issues like a ballet-dancing crab, Matt Brittin, head of Google UK, said that the company has had discussions with the Metropolitan police "and they have said it actually helps track and monitor crime."

But what puzzles me is how Google got around section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, which makes it illegal to photograph police officers – the Government claims that it is for security purposes but maybe Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is worried about police officers having their souls stolen or some such voodoo witchcraft. (Incidentally, as Mark Thomas has pointed out, you *can* still take photos of Community Support Officers and if they try to nick you, you can report them for impersonating a police officer – smirk).

Did they pick a day when there were no police officers on the street (insert comment about “bobbies on the beat” here)? Or did the Google cameras shy away from police stations/donut shops/collections of ethnics in need of a good frisking and possibly a shooting?

I would trawl through Street View trying to find an answer, but my underwear drawer won’t sort itself out.