12/3/00 - An interview with Beth Orton.  The drinking laws are pretty relaxed in Norfolk:

"Her father died of a heart attack when she was 11, at around the time Beth started drinking and going out to clubs."

"All I can say is you’re not going to survive long without food and water, even though the members can drink their own urine. This might be good because people this gullible will be removed from the gene pool and improve the evolution of the species."

"...the newt-fancier just bubbles up to the surface, smiling that infuriatingly smug salamander smile."

"Ken flashes his salamander smile and oozes a charm that would beguile a reptile house of snakes."

"New Labour's thrashing incomprehension of Livingstone's popularity reminds me of nothing so much as the Tories' stunned bewilderment when first faced with the appeal of New Labour. This is a lovely irony. Before the last election, John Major simply couldn't fathom Tony Blair. Surely, Major reasoned, the people would see through this unprincipled opportunist who once subscribed to so many things that made Labour unelectable. Equally, Tony Blair cannot handle the popularity of Livingstone. Surely, he says to himself, the people will see through this unprincipled opportunist who was once responsible for so much that made Labour unelectable."

"He [Stanley Kubrick] quietly withdrew the film when its British run concluded, a decision that came to light only when the National Film Theatre was denied a request for a print in 1979."

I saw it on an awful bootleg in 1989 but it was one of the first movies I got on video when I arrived here in the States.  I still have not seen several of the other 'banned' movies like 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' or 'Driller Killer' (and I don't really want to).

There is a site dedicated  to film and video censorship in Britain. Melon Farmers.

11/3/00 - I found the picture I was looking for.  (via a new British weblog, Mark Howells Online)

11/3/00 - My playlist from this morning's Time Machine.

10/3/00 - To scare some joyriders the police faked an accident involving their relatives:

"Some of the boys wept when they saw police and fire and ambulance crews battling to save their relatives. Others were simply transfixed by shock. The scene was so dreadful that the 10 teenagers, aged 14 to 17, needed counselling on the spot."

10/3/00 - Private Eye is doing a caption competition with the same picture.

9/3/00 - Interesting Top 100 songs, including Robert Wyatt's Pigs!

9/3/00 - Another music guide (handy?) to 'hidden' tracks.  (via Metafilter)

9/3/00 - Another candidate for London Mayor, Lovebucket?

9/3/00 - Rare My Bloody Valentine tracks on MP3, for the day I get that Rio player.  (via gewgaw, who is correct in praising 'You Made Me Realise')

9/3/00 - A handy guide to DVDs offering extra scenes.

9/3/00 - One of the links here offers 'Machine Gun Rentals'!  Words fail me.

9/3/00 - Distinctly different Burma Shave slogans: 

"MY MOM SLEEPS SAFE
--
HER PISTOL IS NEAR
--
THUGS STEER CLEAR
--
OR BANG THEY HEAR"

"Unfortunately, New Mexico has one of the worst records in the preservation of ghost towns. Many states actively protect their ghost towns and keep vandalism to a minimum, but such is not the case New Mexico."

9/3/00 - A site dedicated to 'named' string instruments.  For instance the Stradivarius cello 'Davidoff' formally owned by Jacqueline du Pré, now played by Yo Yo Ma.  (I watched Hilary and Jackie last night which got me onto that topic; an excellent film by the way.)

8/3/00 - Ken Livingstone will undoubtedly win, but Chas N' Dave or Frank Butcher might put in a strong finish.

8/3/00 - Rate those piggies.  (via BrainLog)

8/3/00 - Run pig, run.  From a great site on Atlanta drivers.  (via Pop Culture Junk Mail)

8/3/00 - You can now vote on who you think the 'Vegetarian AntiChrist' is.

7/3/00 - John Darnielle reviewing Randy Newman's Faust:

"Buy this album. You won't like it much. Listen to it until you do."

7/3/00 - A branch of chemistry I'm glad I'm not familiar with: thanatochemistry.

7/3/00 - It seems that Madonna likes British pubs, this will make her really popular:  (via Cardhouse)

"Madonna... said she was perfecting an English accent to use at the bar of her local pub. ``I've been practicing my posh accent all week. I've been getting good grades,'' she added."

7/3/00 - An easy mistake to make:

"One of the pictures illustrating our piece about the gorillas of the Uganda/Congo border area, pages 6 and 7, Travel, March 4, purported to show Dian Fossey with two gorillas. In fact it showed Birute Galdikas with orang-utans in Borneo (as one reader observed, wrong person, wrong animal, wrong continent)."

"Vegetarian Antichrist is 'walking among us'"

6/3/00 - Gratuitous pig link.

5/3/00 - Article on the use of Fourier Transforms.

5/3/00 - Interesting article on mistakes in scientific eponyms.  (via Robot Wisdom)

5/3/00 - Ah, the joys of drink.

5/3/00 - In the US you may call it 'hockey hair' but in Britain it's most definitely a crime committed by football players.

And from the same people comes the Top 10 Football Bastards Voted For By You.

5/3/00 - An article on Britain's new encryption Bill:

"In this law, failure to decrypt carries a two-year prison sentence; in other words, those encrypted files are presumed to be incriminating unless you can prove otherwise. Not only has Jack Straw reversed the burden of guilt, he has also introduced a new criminal activity: forgetting your password."

"The Word Police are looking for a few good people. As a certified Word Police officer, you will be entitled to issue Grammar Citations when you see or hear crimes against the language. To be inducted into the force, you must pass a Word Police Academy exam."

"A leading Methodist evangelist has called on the BBC to stop "depicting Christians as a pathetic huddle of has-beens"..."

5/3/00 - Unbelievable column from Tara Palmer-Tomkinson:

"I went to see a Mariah Carey concert at Wembley Arena last weekend, and I have never felt so unpopular. Not only was the venue packed with thousands of the singer's fans, but the crowd was also yelling out for the person sitting right next to me: Claudia Schiffer. I had agreed to go to the gig with her and Tim Jefferies. Never again! Not only did Claudia have no make-up on and look perfect, but when the audience spotted that she was there, it started applauding and chanting: "Claudia, Claudia." Even though I gave out a little wave to indicate that I was there too, I didn't hear anybody calling out my name."

Here is an earlier article on her 'inner torment' caused by 'a punishing round of parties'.  Poor thing.

5/3/00 - Magnetic Fields appearing in Atlanta on April 20th!  Or San Francisco on March 20th but that's a bit too far to go.

5/3/00 - Yay, Eddie Izzard on Letterman tomorrow.

5/3/00 - Atlantic article about ubiquitous background music:  (via The Spike Report)

"You should be as bright and bubble-gummy as the Monkees' "I'm a Believer" when you shop for a new pair of blue jeans. You ought to be as sophisticatedly ironic as Frank Sinatra's "They've Got an Awful Lot of Coffee in Brazil (The Coffee Song)" when you go out to eat. There's something wrong if you aren't as moody and melancholy as the Cowboy Junkies' whispery version of "Sweet Jane" when you sit in a midtown bar."

As for this two words: Pot. Kettle.

"Geri Halliwell last night extinguished all hopes of a reconciliation with her former Spice Girls bandmates. She used the Brit Awards ceremony to launch a thinly-veiled attack on the remaining members... [she] emerged on to the stage at London's Earl's Court from between a giant pair of female legs and accompanied by four overweight Spice lookalikes who pushed shopping trolleys containing men."

5/3/00 - I put my playlist for yesterday's Time Machine (music 10 years old or older) online.

3/3/00 - Top 90 movies of the '90s courtesy of local film critic Mark Hinson.

3/3/00 - People reacting to the banning of the MacDonald's Quarterpounder like it's a bad thing.

3/3/00 - Lard have put out a new EP and it features 'The Ballad of Marshall Ledbetter', one of Tallahassee's most famous (ex-)citizens.  Jello Biafra talks about it here.  And this site has more details as well as on WVFS' most famous ex-DJ:

"Anyone who saw Gus Van Sant's To Die For last year (1995), was astounded by Nicole Kidman's performance of a star struck woman who would do anything to be famous. "You're nobody unless you're on television," she purrs to the camera. Well, this movie is based on Pam (Wojtas) Smart, a former DJ at WVFS the campus radio station at FSU."

2/3/00 - Article relating to the 'Great Nutrition Debate' from a British perspective:

"It's very easy for us in Britain, of course, to be critical of Americans in this way. We can still get a sandwich, if we shop around, where the bread actually seems to be a significant ingredient. And while we may be getting a little fatter than we used to be, at least most of don't wobble quite as much as our counterparts across the Atlantic. But this smugness should be tempered by the fact that the same paths which have led Americans to lose the plot when it comes to food and nutrition are the ones down which we ourselves are now progressing. We are surrounded by the same cranky diet books, and the same proscriptive 'advice' on a 'healthy' diet which more often just reflects the ideology of the day rather than evidence and hard data."

2/3/00 - An article about DNA testing:  (via Arts & Letters Daily)

"A major reason DNA fingerprinting remains stalled in the U.S. is the opposition of civil libertarians. They claim that collecting DNA data is "Orwellian," or—mixing dystopias—that it heralds a nightmarish "Brave New World," as ACLU associate director Barry Steinhardt ominously puts it."

2/3/00 - Another funny Onion piece:  (via librarian.net)

"Nations Teens Disappointed By Banned Books

...other complaints [about] banned books [included]: the monster in John Garner's Grendel isn't scary at all and doesn't even act like a monster; William Golding's Lord Of The Flies is not actually about a mutant insect man who can control the world's flies with his mental powers..."

"This is the end of fearsome. This is not the end of atheism."

"This is where we hope to include up-to-the-minute musings and rants from yours truly. In all probability, this journal will probably be updated sporadically at best, until it is eventually forgotten entirely and languishes uselessly here on the website, an uncomfortable reminder of faded dreams and youthful aspirations..."

2/3/00 - I can't believe I missed National Pig Day.  (via Mister Pants)

1/3/00 - Neutral Milk Hotel will release their early material on CD. (via Pitchfork)

What we really want is a new album.

1/3/00 - Everyone's favourite Internet nut Sam Sloan expounds his belief that John McCain will win and:

"But, can he speak Viet Namese? How fluently? After spending five years there, if he cannot he is a real dummy."

1/3/00 - Roger Ebert's and Martin Scorsese's top 10 movies of the '90s.  (via Pith and Vinegar)

I was unimpressed by several of their choices (Heat?!) but making my own list is proving pretty difficult.

1/3/00 - It seems that even community ownership doesn't prevent blackmail:  (via Obscure Store)

"Green Bay Packers officials warned Tuesday that the community could lose the team if nothing is done to renovate Lambeau Field..."

"One simple reason, mainly: professional sports leagues have prohibited community ownership.  The NFL formally banned community ownership in 1961..."

1/3/00 - Gratuitous pig link:

"Urged into a makeshift sty by a gaggle of press photographers and farmers, the Right Rev John Oliver gamely hoisted up his cassock and climbed in. "Go on, stroke it," one farmer yelled. "It's a nice clean pig.""