Yes, you can now buy a roll of St. George flags for anus wiping.

Who the shitting Science* thought this would be a good idea?

Anyway, get them from play.com, if you really want to.

(The play.com domain name is registered from the island of Jersey. The Admin contact is UK based, but the Tech contact is in France.)

*oh go find the South Park episode.

(See the story at http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2960673/Ghostly-figure-of-a-weeping-girl-in-mirror-of-hotel-room.html)

This little girl gets about a bit. Sometimes she appears in kitchen door glass (http://www.ghostsandstories.com/little-girl-ghost.html).

But this is hardly surprising considering this iPhone App: http://www.appstorehq.com/ghostcapture-iphone-79452/app

But it isn’t just the outrageous fakery that annoys me. Just read the story for all the signs of Sun Bullshit:

• Unidentified guests
• Unidentified spokesman
• Random words in BOLD CAPITALS

Honestly, if they want some made-up bullshit they should contact me. A copy of my CV should proove fictional enough for them.

Space, as they say, is big. Really big. Frank Sidebottom also says that Space is ace, and we can’t really argue with that, can we? Space is also, by its very nature, three dimensional.

This seems to passed by the writers of Star Trek. Events always seem to occur within a set plane. For example, Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country begins with the an explosion on the Klingon Moon Praxis producing a shockwave which only seems to travel in two dimensions.

The Praxis Wave

This wave progesses through space until it is encountered by the USS Excelsior and Captain Sulu, who turn into the wave rather than dodging out of its way. Surely the former helmsman of the Enterprise should remember about Up and Down?

The Excelsior, not going up or down.

Ok, I’ll concede that the Praxis wave is a pretty effect, but that is no excuse for ignoring the third dimension.

Time and agin, when ships rendezvous or do battle, they do so sharing a common idea of up and down.

All the right way up!

Now maybe this should be the case during diplomatic meetings, but it does seem a mite strange for a battle situation.

Klingons on the, erm, Port Stern!

In fact, the only instances I can find where ships are not aligned like this is when one of the ships is either out of control or has been disabled.

Can anyone actually give me a valid reason why this always happens, or alternately find an example that contradicts this?

More ships, just for good measure.

A Voyager at Stafford

Some people might say that they represent a giant leap forward in train technology. These people are probably short, have no sense of smell and enjoy rollercoasters. And are probably clinically insane.

Myself, I’m of above average height, can still smell despite a good few years chain-smoking and hate all fairground rides. I’ll neatly sidestep the sanity issue (I’m typing this on a Datawind Ubisurfer – I must have been bananas to buy it).

My first major moan about the Voyager concerns the piss-awful seats and lack of legroom. Now when I say that I am of above average height I mean that I am abiout six foot four. This doesn’t put me into the realm of basketball players or circus freaks, but it does stop me sitting in most of the seats on a Voyager. Table seats are fine, if you want to share a table with a drunken Scottish squaddie (are they all AWOL and hiding on the trains, or is it always the same one?), and the priority wheelshair users’ seating has sufficient room, but the majority of the seating would require me to undergo a leg-ectomy for me to use them. I suppose I could sit sideways across two seats, but that is uncouth, yobbish behaviour for the sort of folk who play their music loud in public.

Yobbish behaviour

When Charles Darwin designed the human olfactory organs he must have had quite a chuckle to himself when he put in the bits that enable you to smell the unique aroma of a Virgin Voyager. Is a whiff of flatulence combined with a hint of smoke? A solid leavening of used toilet with a dash of electrical burning? Or is it,as I suspect, a full blown massive turd secreted directly on to an electric heater full of cat hair? The reason for this is apparently that the toilet effluent tanks vent into the bodywork, and that the wiring is prone to going shonky. Not even the APT had these features!

An APT, not on fire.

But these are just minor nit-picking flaws, I can almost hear you say. Surely the superior ride quality makes up for them? Well, yes, of course, assuming your  idea of a nice journey involves lurching from side to side, up and down, and occassionally backwards and forwards. During the course of typing this, by netbook as been dislodged from the little wanky tray-table no less than three times. I’d have a smoother ride in a Land Rover. Across a bomb site. Under shelling.

The Next Generation Voyager will have more comforts.

And let us not forget, the government spent millions between 1959 and 1974 to electrify the West Coast Main Line, and now Captain Beardy is pissing all over this by running diesel trains on it. Money well spent! Its like buying the entire run of Star Trek Voyager on DVD, and copying them on to ropey old VHS tapes, then scrubbing the tapes with magnets before watching them.

But never mind. Just watch a video of better times.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats

Recognise it? It was used as the closing monologue of the Heroes episode “The Second Coming”.

Subject: Book A Test Drive Now!

To celebrate with us, hurry to your nearest Citroën dealer and find out how we’re continuing to inspire and delight discerning motorists with our award-winning range and take advantage of 0% APR typical finance* on the Citroën C4 Picasso, Grand C4 Picasso, new C3 Picasso and the C5.  You can now purchase any Citroën with an extra £2000 off using the government scrappage scheme.

As I would rather push a Ford than drive a Citroën, I shall be declining your offer.

roëne

Just look at the bonuses:

• Take a week off work (paid if you’re lucky)
• Have nothing to do but lie around and watch the Sharpe series so many times you can memorise every bloody episode
• Save money – live on nothing but anti-viral drugs, Beecham’s Powders and Lockets
• Have some really groovy hallucinations

All you need to do is combine Pandemic H1N1 with a common chest infection and all this can be yours.

(Caution, may also cause extensive hair loss!)

First though, here are the adverts from times past:

Classy stuff, i’m sure you’ll agree, and cock all to do with the game which is a poor Civilisation clone with no queen to save, and thus no norks.

And so on to the new advert…

Christ, you’d hardly know it it was for Evony if it wasn’t for the “My Lord” catchphrase, and the the familiar looking button.

Still, it seems to work for them. Gullible idiots seem to be playing the game and even paying for it.

So. If it works for them, it might work for me. If you want to volunteer to show a lot of cleavage to advertise a website of mine, don’t hesitate to contact me. Jon, this does NOT apply to you!

I’ve come up with this little thing, after sitting in a but discussing why the Withnail and I soundtracks is one of the best ever made.

What you have to do is:

• Come up with 10 songs to go on the soundtrack to an imaginary film.
• You can’t cheat and include dialogue snippets to pad out the soundtrack (like Tarantino tends to do), but the songs can come from any source.
• You don’t have to describe what the song relates to in your imaginary film, but you can if you want to.
• Post your soundtrack in the comments section.

To get the ball rolling, here is my list:

1. “Spirit in the Sky” – Doctor and the Medics
2. “Dizzy” – The Wonderstuff and Vic Reeves
   
3. “Gimme Shelter” – The Sisters Of Mercy
4. “Que Sera, Sera (We Hope It’s Chips, It’s Chips)” – From the 80s Birds Eye advert
5. “House of the Rising Sun” – Frijid Pink
6. “Faith Healer” – Fish
7. “Driven By You (Ford Advert Version)” – Brian May
8. “Paint It Black” – U2
9. “I Wish I Was in Greenall Whitley Land” – 80s Greenalls advert
10. “No More Monkeys (Jumping on the Bed) – Unknown
    

You may have noticed that the real songs are all cover versions.

A bit of investigation has revealed that this is an Electone FE-30, from way back in 1984. Thankfully I’ve found the manual, as Yamaha keep all their old manuals on line, so I can learn how to work the thing!