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I
Have made
A very big decision.
(Lou Reed, Heroin)

Effective immediately, this blog and this persona will be discontinued. The experiment has run its course. From now on the interwebs will just have to struggle on without me.

I decided to do this quite abruptly and quite unexpectedly. I guess there are a number of reasons, but what tipped me over the edge was the sobering discovery that even with a public OpenId presence as pathetically tiny as mine, control over my own identity — or ‘branding’ as I explicitly like to think of it — had already spun irreversibly out of my grasp. So fuck that. I’m leaving and I’m taking my pencils with me.

Just to be clear, I will not be changing or removing anything from the site.  I bequeath my virtual corpse to the intertubes, where it will lay undisturbed until WordPress chooses to recycle its electrons. Or until the mountains crumble to the sea, whichever is sooner.

(I think  people continue to find the Nokia 1680c-2 post useful, so if anyone wants to copy that and host it elsewhere before it is untimely plucked away, then please, be my guest.)

‘What will you do with all your extra free time?’ I hear you ask. Well, I dunno, innit, but I daresay I’ll think of something.

Pilfered from here

Nature’s Corbels

Well, two of them anyway:

A charming color-coordinated mud-nest made by a family of house martins or swifts or something.

Some kind of purple bracket fungus. Quite possibly you could eat this. (Please note: I’m not saying you wouldn’t suffer any ill effects; I’m just saying you could eat it.)

Weights and Measures

Yeah, I know just how that bag feels. These days I weigh over two cubic feet. I should probably exercise more.

Also, have you ever wondered how come some litter always seems to leak out of the bag? Well, at least in this case it’s because the packaging has holes deliberately made in all the corners: four in front, four in back. Tiny holes to be sure (you can see one in the bottom right corner of the above pic).  But why are they even there?

Does kitty litter need to breathe? Would the bag asplode in hot weather if it was sealed? Or do the makers of Pro Diet Cat Litter Clumping Formula think that their customers actually want to have particles of kitty litter all over the back seat of the car?

The Wonderful World of Fashion

I tried posting this on the blog in question, but it just seems to disappear. Censorship? Moderation? Spam filter? Technical fuckup? Who knows? Anyway, fuck it, I’ll post it here instead.

So. Tanya Gold is a journalist I just ran into on teh intertubes. She seems to write intelligently and well, so I was checking out some of her columns, including this one, which was originally inspired by some poor dumb bitch who ran along a railway platform in high heels one snowy night. In consequence of which she fell under a train and was killed.

Of course, most fashion items don’t literally kill people, but on the other hand, fashion in general probably adds about as much overall happiness to the world as overpriced, carbonated, sugar-based, caffeinated drinks. (Ie less than zero, for those of you keeping score at home.) Anyway, to her credit, Tanya managed to turn in a pretty good piece on the tired old subject of how the fashion industry is basically just a lamentable, exploitative wank.

Fashion bloggers — or at least this one and most of his commenters — responded by labeling Tanya a ‘hater extraordinaire’ and concluding that she is ‘insecure’ and has an ‘aching, empty void where [her] personality should be.’

Which is marvelously ironic. I invite you to compare the balanced tone and content of Tanya’s original column to the venomous outrage of the apoplectic fashionistas.

Nothing wrong with a bit of apoplexy and venom, of course, but here, alas, it’s entirely misplaced. One wonders if these people ever listen to themselves. Or if they’ve ever heard of projection.

No, really, you’re wrong. That’s not it at all.

One Person One Vote. Per Candidate.

As long as people continue to be exercised about voting reform, why not implement a system that allows the voters to express dissatisfaction as well as preference? You could do it like this –

Allow every voter to enter a plus or a minus in the box beside each candidate’s name. Optionally they may also leave any of the boxes blank.

Votes for each candidate are then tallied, with each plus scoring +1 and each minus scoring -1. Blank boxes are ignored.

The candidate with the largest positive score wins the seat. However, if none of the candidates amass a positive score, then the seat remains unfilled.

The number of MPs/congresspersons/representatives would be slashed in an instant, while those that survived (if any) could finally legitimately claim that they had a popular mandate.

Win-win, I’d say. And voter turnout would be huge!

Election Logic

Vote for me or the puppy gets it

From The Independent –

Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, the [Lib Dem] party’s Treasury spokesman, said:

“The numbers show that half the country cannot stand Gordon Brown and that the other half can’t stand David Cameron. [...]

[...] In 90 minutes in the first debate, Nick Clegg tore open the two-party straitjacket which has stifled British politics for the last 80 years. Now, at last, people can vote for what they want, not against what they fear.”

Wait, what? Didn’t you just point out that voters were turning to the Lib Dems because every single one of them hates either Brown or Cameron? Which would mean that voting against what they hate/fear would be precisely what they’d be doing if they voted for Clegg’s lot. At least, this was the conclusion toward which your argument was inexorably heading until that last minute swerve, when you belatedly realized that ‘The Party That Fewer People Hate (Because They Don’t Know Who We Are)’ probably isn’t a very good slogan.

Oh well, never mind. It’s not as though it makes any fucking difference anyway.

Hypotheticals

But what happens if someone wants to turn the valve to ‘closed’?

Oh, don’t worry. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Or maybe not.

Unlinked

The Devil’s Kitchen has now been unlinked from my blog roll for the unpardonable act of ‘disappearing’ all of his blog posts prior to April 2010.

This mass extinction occurred after a thorough ‘wigging’ (ho ho) at the hands of establishment dwarf Andrew Neil — ‘Our public service duty to you’.

DK’s version of events is here. Hat-tips and links from Mark [Thompson] Reckons and Charlotte Gore

Wherefore by their pusillanimous behavior IRL, so ye shall know them. Matthew 7:20.

Phwoar! What a disappointment

‘Swedish Prince Dating Topless Model’!!! leered the Telegraph.

Unfortunately the accompanying photo wasn’t what I’d been led to believe, so I fixed it for them –

Prince Carl Philip and the bottom two-thirds of Sofia Hellqvist

(The original story is here, but it’s just a bunch of celebrity shite so I wouldn’t bother if I were you. )

Accessorized Hubcaps

Casual, natural white Boedicea strimmers for the front. Neatly trimmed, formal black for the rear. And yes, it’s the same on both sides. This ain’t just some random kludge, baby, that’s some serious stylin’ right there.

(This is not my car. My car doesn’t have any hubcaps. Hey, wait a minute — maybe I should have used cable ties??… Doh!)