“…insisted that despite the huge amounts of energy the Large Hadron Collider will produce, it posed no risk to the safety of the planet.”

Is that a line out Mars Attacks or what!

“Professor Otto Rössler, a German chemist at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen…” is quoted in the Telegraph as saying “[m]y own calculations have shown that it is quite plausible that these little black holes survive and will grow exponentially and eat the planet from the inside.”

I much prefer Gail Collins’ view in the New York Times:

“…fretting about black holes is more fun than worrying about global warming; it feels very cutting edge and does not require recycling.”

I’m off to Whole Foods to by me some organically produced mini black hole repellant!

1996 the power of sex mp3 download

“These are: overcoming the monster (Beowulf/Jaws); rags to riches (Cinderella); the quest (Lord of the Rings); voyage (The Odyssey); comedy (Pride and Prejudice); tragedy (King Lear); and rebirth (A Christmas Carol). An astonishingly high proportion of European classics can be slotted into Booker’s categories. He should be appointed emeritus professor of Future Storytelling.”¹

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/30/robert-mccrum-on-books

Whilst rooted to the spot I don’t tend to have that many experiences which I deem worthy of broadcasting or remembering. Went to work on a Tuesday, got drunk at this pub, met up with such and such for a coffee, read my book on the tube. It all gets to be a bit samey.

And then you get a spontaneous invite to see a transvestite comedian in Vauxhall who spends as much time inebriated and abusing the audience as he does prancing around on stage looking fabulous.

Friends from the BBC – Kate, Julie and I – cycled from work alongside the river Thames and across to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Absolutely starving we grabbed some greasy fish and chips and sat in the park to munch away. Vauxhall is not the nicest of suburbs and whilst it didn’t feel unsafe to be sitting in the evening sun ingesting pure grease, inevitably the conversation turned to drug deals, poverty and the down and out. Now stop and imagine a time where a repetitive sound has been rolling up through your unconsciousness until bam – you become aware of something that has been there for quite a while tap tap tapping away. I turned around a man in his mid 40s hobbled his way with one crutch across the green, click, step, click, step. As he got close enough he stammered to speak but his words were incoherent. I gathered ‘light’ and then by his gestures offered him the remains of my food, Julie doing the same. He was incredibly gracious, turned around and slowly started to hobble away. As we ourselves walked in the opposite direction towards the venue Kate noticed that he had pissed his tracksuit pants.

A montage of high and low art are projected onto a screen on stage, which the audience surrounds in a large raucous semi-circle. The curtain raises and a woman dressed in 18th century garb wanders onto the stage with a cello. She plays an opener to which the rest of the entourage waltz out: two svelte anemic young women, a similary svelte and anemic young man, and a voluptuous hag of a woman with ample bosoms. Whilst they were prancing around Duckie made his entrance in an over the top frilly dress and was bedecked in the biggest wig (of course). He proceeded to denigrate his pox ridden whores and wax on how the 18th Century was a role model and comparable the 21st.

And then he ranted. The welfare state should be abolished. In the 18the Century stable boys with 12 inch members (I am cleaning up the language a bit) would be forced to ‘sell themselves’ to the Lord of the manor. This just doesn’t happen these days! In the 18th Century poor mothers of unwanted babies would go for a walk with their bawling offspring and a bottle of gin to the Thames, throw the baby and drink the gin. Forced sterilisation of ignorant chavs and chavettes would stop the over population and get rid of welfare dependency.

The show was split up into three acts so that Duckie could get more inebriated. Act two saw him eliciting questions from the audience and replying with insults. A person asked how could he rail against the welfare state when it helps so many people, including Duckie himself. The reply came with his hands on his 18th Century hips while wearing his 18th Century dress and saying with his 18th Century lip-sticked lips that “I might say some controversial things just to shock people”. To which another member called out “Are you saying the quote wrongly attributed to Voltaire – ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’”. Upon being asked to repeat it from another member of the audience Duckie repeated himself screaming because the guy was obviously deaf and wasting his time – and insisted that the quote was by Voltaire to be contrary and piss the original questioner off.

Act three began with Duckie peeing into a hay bale, and was then followed by the voluptuous hag whose breasts were by now lolling all over the place. The entire pub stank of urine which proceeded to get kicked over those audience members in the front row – much to their chagrin.

To complete the debaucherous show Duckie threw paint on the stage wall comparing his menagerie of flea-infested, lower-class stable-hands to an unwitting couple he dragged up on stage. The representatives of the 21st Century were predictably depicted as miserable with their current state of society, whilst there progenitors were depicted in all smiling, small-poxing glory.

This week is ‘the internet‘, I cannot wait.

Pandora podcast page
Direct podcast link

It covers diverse topics from drumbeats and guitar effedts, composition, lyrics and of course genre – fascinating. I now know the difference between techno, house, trance, drum and bass and downbeat – and it is more than just the beats per minute. I just had it all listed as electronica in my eyepod.

Who else can interview and be interviewed by Bill O’Reilly and make the infamous Fox News presenter look like a retard.

Who else gets invited to speak at the annual White House correspondents dinner (2006) and spends twenty minutes lampooning President Bush – in front of President Bush, his wife, and everybody else of political consequence in Washington. Now I might be a little belated in blogging about the political news story of 2006, but having just discovered it and how funny it was I couldn’t not pass it on.

One of many juicy quotes with Dubya sitting just to places to his right: “I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers, and rubble, and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.”

Rumour has it that Laura Bush told him “f#ck you” at the end, although that is probably a leftwing conspiracy theory spread by the liberal media. At least one Republican understands sarcasm.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more links of American (and some British) political satire check out One Good Move. The archive section contains all of the videos that have appeared on the home page, and especially a comprehensive list of Bill Maher’s New Rules (use the find in your browser to locate each ‘New Rules’). Classic.

Outside Fisherman’s Wharf YHI

The view up Lombard Street

God Bless America

The hostel in Chelsea I stayed in

Welcome to the centre of the Universe!

Looking down Wall Street

Well you get the idea! Of course this has been used for nefarious purposes. An entire site devoted to spotting strange happenings is now indexing the bizzare of America. Apparently Canadians don’t want this level of intrusion into their daily lives, but I say if you aren’t doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to hide :). So don’t pick your nose in public.

“The cutting-edge technique the team used to isolate the virus may find applications with human diseases as well. Instead of trying to culture bacteria or isolate viruses—often a lengthy process—the researchers ground up the bees and rapidly sifted through all of the genetic material in search of a suspicious microorganism.”((Chicago Herald Tribune: Virus a clue to deaths))

So exactly what human application will this have? Grinding up cancer patients? “Excuse me, can we borrow your arm for a test.” Not likely!