Users of the British Government are warned that some disruption is expected during emergency maintenance being carried out at the Home Office to switch over to our backup beard. The following services may be affected:
Tony
Senior Support Technician,
Britain
(… from last night’s recording) was my unscripted grunt to signify how annoyed Joseph was with the guy who’d stuck us in his garage. There was something wonderfully satisfying about stepping back from the microphone and getting a cheery thumbs up from James.
Being a soldier was fun, though. I might have to write an audio play where I get to do nothing other than hit things and cry out “they’re over there”, and “hit it with a shovel”. Possibly involving killing vampires, so it’s less disturbing than slaughtering children.
Or something. A bit out of date, but via the terrific Marianne Levy, the concept of Real Age. Mine is within a year of my actual age (or what, up until now, I was just calling my ‘age’ – how foolish I was back then). I have absolutely no idea what this means, except that it was a fun way to pass an idle few minutes.
I sometimes wonder, if I stayed at home on Mondays and just frittered the day away, if Tuesdays at work would then actually turn out to be productive. I suspect they actually would – against all common sense. There’s something about the water on Mondays.
You, our dear readers, occupy at least some of our thoughts while writing entries. Perhaps ten percent, on a bad day; as much as ninety on a sun-shining, birds-singing day. Today is not one of those days – dreary, the sky the colour of bald linoleum – but I thought I’d buck the winter trend by thinking about what is important to you.
The answers, gathered scientifically by looking at what people were searching for when they found the site, is that you are interested in the Uncertainty Division, and you are interested in porn. Specifically Harry Potter porn.
In fact, you’re more interested in Harry Potter porn than in us (137 hits to 128), providing that we assume “Harry Potter porn” and “Hermione porn” are all really after the same thing. I certainly hope that no one came here looking for “Hagrid porn”; for a start, they’d have been sorely disappointed, and for a second they’re just sick.
Anyway, I’d just like to let you know that we’ve taken on board your interests. However we can’t act further until we know what sort of porn you want Ms Grainger to perform. We’ll be watching the search referrals carefully – as well as looking out for the most popular person to portray Hermione in this new venture. Currently the front runner is James Lark, but Jeff Goldblum isn’t far behind, with a small but dedicated contingent seemingly interested in a Hermione/The Fly crossover …
The Evening Standard (which I don’t buy, but which has a tendency of being full of interesting-looking letters while I’m buying lunch) has devoted its front page to telling us how Oona King, MP for bits of London where you can get a blowjob only slightly more easily than cocaine, was offered cash for sex while an assistant at the European Parliament.
Most of the page is spent wittering on about this in tones of mild disgust (whether at the MEP in question, or Ms King herself, was somewhat unclear from a cursory glance, but I’ll assume they’re shocked at the offer), waiting until the last column to reveal that he offered to pay out of his cost allowance. Which, as far as I understand, means he was offering to defraud the European Parliament for a bit of nookie. I don’t want to belittle people who are unjustly treated like whores, but isn’t fraud serious enough to get a little higher up? Perhaps MEP’s fiddling their expenses is just too common these days, although doing it to fiddle your assistant isn’t something I’ve heard before.
The Scotsman also covers it, citing an article by Ms King in the Daily Mirror (which I’ll let pass). They print some of her words, which make interesting reading:
“People complain that with all-women shortlists you end up with mediocre candidates,” she said. “But, my God, has nobody noticed that the Commons is stuffed with mediocre men? That’s because the system has effectively put forward all-men shortlists for 500 years or more.”
If the Commons is stuffed with mediocre men (something I’m not convinced about, but never mind) then most of them are Labour. The total number of ministers is large enough to be a reasonable sample of the House of Commons, so a fair number of them must be mediocre men as well. Which perhaps isn’t quite what she meant. But what really gets me is the use of the word ‘effectively’ in that last sentence – I wish she’d just come out and say that the system favours men. And that “500 years or more” – parliament extends back, in a broken and somewhat jittery line, to the thirteenth century: is she saying that corrupt male primacy had probably disappeared by the nineteenth century? The first woman MP was elected in late 1918, but did not take her seat; the first who did wasn’t until nearly a year later. It’s a horribly misleading statement – which perhaps explains why Mirror readers are so horribly misled.
The Scotsman is also notable for using reported speech to present something it really could have fact-checked for itself:
Ms King said that the record 120 female MPs elected to Parliament in 1997 made up more than half of the total of 239 women who had ever been MPs up to that point.
Had they bothered to check, they might have pointed out that of those female MPs, a whopping fifty were defending their seats in 1997. So only seventy or so new female MPs were elected.
But we’ll accept her numbers; it would be churlish to argue over points of mathematics. Now: who’s in favour of declaring Disraeli a girl to make that an even half?
After reading of James’ diocesal publicity (see below), I decided to see if Google knew of any good photos of me. It’s unlikely, given that very few photos of me have found their way onto the Internetweb – but you never know, so I thought I’d give it a try.
The first page of results is somewhat perplexing. Photos of myself, James and the two Andrews (presumably missing Phil, Ali, Susie and Mary – who are also featured on this site – because they’ve only been up for a mere six months, lazy Google) jostle for position with:
The last three are most amazing, because they seem to appear on pages that contain neither “James” nor “Aylett”. Google, it seems, is nothing if not unpredictable. Which isn’t really what I want from Google, to be honest.
I reckon they’re in his beard.
Well, he has a beer, and (somewhat less excitingly) a “castle” (or what the English, more accurately, might call “a house”, or perhaps simply “ours”).
He also appears to have a ship. I particularly like the lifelike rendition of its demise at the bottom of that page.
Prince and the New Education
Prince Charles is reported as complaining that “young people believed they could succeed without having talent or putting in hard work”. This just makes sense, doesn’t it? When did we start believing that people could get ahead without being good at what they do, and dedicating themselves to it?
Perhaps Charles has said more inflammatory things that no one can be bothered to report. That’s Prince Charles there, not Charles Clarke, who says equally sensible things like “We can aspire to do our best”. I just don’t see how these things aren’t equally capable of being true. What am I missing?
Spain and racism
Metro reports Spanish daily AS as saying “Multi-culturalism is a new thing in our country”. Isn’t Christians and Moors fighting each other considered multi-cultural these days? At the very least, it’s a backdrop to the comment which perhaps should have been acknowledged.
Metro have also managed to avoid an article in the phrase “FIFA, football world’s governing body”. Really not sure how that works.
Best about this story, however, has got to be that FIFA’s president is called Sepp Blatter. Wow!
MTV Europe Music Awards
Metro notes that Sarah Michelle Gellar co-hosted – indeed, there’s a picture of her on the front page – but fails to point out how bad she looks in that make-up. No one’s going to want to have sex with you if you look like Barbie, Sarah. Well, no one except Ken.
The above, said by a man at the station last night. It was definitely snow, and this morning car windscreens were covered in crazily patterned ice, the grass was layered with a thin white – but, fortunately, the pavements and roads were clear, possibly due to some magic underground heating system the council has installed without telling anyone. (Or possibly because the ground retains heat fairly well, and we’re still not properly into winter. But my way is more fun.)
Talk To Rex 