SNAKE!

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Monday's No Fun

Ice Pops in Hell! Pat Buchanan says something that doesn’t seem a whole barrel of crazy (thanks, Stacie for the link).

The ongoing death of the magazine cover.

Adventures in Tech Support! (Or: Why you should never phone a tech support hotline unless you're prepared for a special delivery of pain).

Bwahahahaha. This is a great idea. The Pentagon can stick the Neocons on Earth-2, and let them play out all their little fantasies, thus making the world a safer, saner place.

Third-party Candidates everywhere!

Truly Outrageous!

Activist Judges Are Killing The Music Industry

This week, we’re going back to the late 1980s, and The Field Mice. Jangly guitars forever! Or something.

• The Field Mice — Kiss And Make Up

(yes, I prefer the Saint Etienne version as well. But does it have jangly guitars? NO! And that's the mood I'm in today. Hush, or I'll stick a Prefab Sprout or Aztec Camera track up as well…)

For those of you who remember the God-like Genius that is Empire Records (there can be no bad words said about this film. Okay, you could, but you'd be Mad and Wrong), you might recall a post-punk version of Money (That's What I Want) that gets played in the background of a few scenes. This is not that song. But it is a cover by the same band, so it almost fits. I just wanted an excuse to mention Empire Records…

• The Flying Lizards — Sex Machine

"Stop…Carry on?"

It’s not entirely unexpected, but still rather sad to hear that Mark and Lard, mainstays of Radio 1 for the past ten years, are splitting up and moving to Radio 2 and 6 respectively. What will we do without High Tea and Tosspots? Who will ask us if we “Fancy A Brew”? What will happen to Lard’s “Waaarp” sanctuary? Will Frogging become a pay-per-view sport only available to Freeview viewers who press red now?

Here's the liner notes for "Reverse Midas Touch", a compilation of their greatest Records of The Week (complete with chart placings so they could see just how much an effect they had on the chart; it wasn't pretty), that I sent to them a few years ago.

Mark and Lard began their afternoon show on October 13th 1997, having help to ease the burden on Radio 1's overworked transmitters by chopping off two million listeners from the Breakfast Show's audience.

The hapless duo stated their intention to perform as well in the afternoon as they did at breakfast, hoping to reduce the next RAJAR audience survey to double figures. They brought all-new (and some well-worn_ quality items to the show; who could forget the blazing originality of the Cheesily Cheerful Chart Challenge, or the staggering genius of "Flick or Trick"?

Who could resist Lard's sultry "Waaarrps", or Mark's slavish devotion to the Radio 1 playlist? Or the spectacular collaboration between Fat Harry White and the London Philharmonic Orchestra? This, and many more radio gems, are not included on this CD.

For this is a CD celebrating the Record of The Week. For anybody in Radio 1's target audience, that's all those bits of noise that the play before 911 comes on, or the latest number one by a Chancer With A Drum Machine Washing On The Right-Hand Side. For everybody else, seeing what the duo had picked for this week's record was worth sitting through the endless Steps/Lolly/insert playlisted song here.

They all had something in common. They sold six copies each.

So, without too much ado, we present "The Hit Parade of an alternate universe." A universe where the Lighthouse Family are indeed locked up in a lighthouse, and Michael Bolton is a failed hairdresser, and where the word "playlist" is verboten.

"Do The Mashed Potato!"

Grammar Nazis Rule OK

Ha ha ha ha ha ha

Oh Lauren, So Much To Answer For

The new Johnny Vaughan show is not as bad as they say. It somehow manages to be worse. A drunken Westlife and Lauren Laverne reduced to pointing at pictures of people holding sausages. 8-(.

Why don't you turn off TV and do something more interesting instead? Because I'm on Tape Duty tonight; I have to record different programmes for my sister, some of which are on satellite, some need to be on the same tape, and some require the juggling of tapes before a tight deadline. I'm the only person in the family who can be trusted with this, so Bonnie has ordered that I can't visit her tonight, as getting the Brit Awards on video is more important than seeing me. I don't mind, oh no. Might just tape over the Justin Timberlake appearances with something more suitable, though. Muahahahaha....

Brief Links

All you wanted to know about the leaked Windows source code (and probably a little more besides).

Flying the friendly, God-fearing skies. And, for Bonnie, even though she won't see this until the weekend (she went into hospital today), a polier for an upcoming episode of the now-cancelled Angel:

Tired and Emotional

Listening regularly to the radio again has some benefits; you often get to hear something that you’d never have heard otherwise. Here’s Her Space Holiday, with a song that Lauren Laverne played earlier this week on her radio show, "My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend". It’s like a mixture of The Magnetic Fields with the Primitive Radio Gods and Bran Van 3000…no wait! Come back! Give it a chance!

And, to keep up my indie-obscurity cred, here's a track that you probably won't have heard before, unless you attended a party in Carrboro in October last year. Yes, this is a Bhangra remix of Snap's "The Power". Cower in fear when you discover I have a full CD-R of these things!

The Scott McClellan Drinking Game!

You will need:

• some alcohol
• access to C-SPAN or the Whitehouse.gov feed

Take a drink when:

• Scott mentions September 11th
• …and another when it is has nothing to do with the question asked
• An extra drink if the subject of Iraq and September 11th occur in the same breath.
• Scott ignores the question being asked and repeats the same thing he said a minute ago
• Scott says "activist judges" with a scathing look on his face
• Scott mentions "The War on Terror"
• …and how it has made the world a safer place
• The Press Corps laughs at an obvious evasion
• Scott declines to answer Russell Mokhiber's question

Take a long drink when:

• The Press Corps asks the same question for over fifteen minutes
• …and they still don't get an answer
• Scott goes through tortured hoops to suggest that Bush will alter the Constitution, but never actually say the actual words
• Having no desire to continue this line of questioning, Scott attempts to change the subject, and fails miserably

Drink everything in sight when:

• Scott pulls out a Magnum, fires it wildy into the air screaming "The next person to ask about his military record goes down by a Magmum load!"
• Scott starts the briefing by saying "But first, let's do the HULA!"
• Russell Mokhiber is satisfied with an answer to one of his questions