Too Far From Anywhere

Open letter to the guy sitting in the BA lounge at T5 talking to his screaming crotch-fruit on his iPad

2011-10-14T18:07:00.000+01:00

You are a fucking asshole with a defective social responsibility gene and every single person within a 50 yard radius is imagining sticking pitchforks into your eyes. The fact that you have reproduced fills me with horror. Your genes will pollute the planet for at least another generation and the universe will be a significantly worse place because you and your spawn are in it. Talking

Steve Jobs: so long but not goodbye

2011-08-25T11:16:00.002+01:00

Apple will, of course, survive and in the short to medium term keep producing interesting, innovative products but the passion from the top will be gone. Steve lived and breathed Apple. He sweated the small stuff. I don't care how fanatical an Apple fan you are, if you have an Apple logo tattooed on your ass and you named your kid Newton, no one loves Apple more than Steve. As cult

To all the gun nuts criticizing the UK for having an "unarmed population unable defend itself"

2011-08-11T16:22:00.000+01:00

Did you every stop to consider that for every shopkeeper with a shotgun there would be fifty street punks with pistols? A right to bear arms cuts both ways. As bad as it has been in London, running gun battles would have been far, far worse.

If London is calling, you better hang up (then bolt the doors, hide the children and board up the windows)

2011-08-11T00:05:00.003+01:00

@font-face { font-family: "Palatino"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; } The US is paralyzed by vitriolic party politics, the world economy is circling the drain and gangs of thugs have set London aflame. The fourth horseman

Sad

2011-08-10T12:43:00.000+01:00

Against a backdrop of London burning, the global economy about to tank again, wars in more places than I can name, this story about a gay couple being forcibly broken apart and one partner deported makes me unbelievably sad. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/09/BAO71KKPEC.DTL The little things make the big things look all that much worse.

New York you fucking ROCK!

2011-06-25T10:14:00.000+01:00

Same sex marriage approved in New York: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-new-york-gay-marriage-20110625,0,650746.story Slowly, with agonizing deliberation and halting steps, the US is being pulled out of the shadows of bigotry. Or maybe not. My feelings about America can be summed up in this one article and the comments posted about it: a wellspring of pride followed by

This is SOOOOO British

2011-06-22T21:35:00.002+01:00

Council builds a fence through a goal post: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-13873091

I am a very bad person

2011-06-01T18:33:00.003+01:00

Union Station, Los Angeles. I'm waiting for my train to Santa Barbara seated on an iron bench in a small garden-like appendage attached to the main building. I'm playing with my new phone; trying to make it release a voice mail that it has locked away for safe keeping. It's LA warm, a particular kind of heat that is produced by relentless sunshine bouncing off too much concrete. My sleeves

A corporate whore says goodbye to Twitter

2011-05-30T16:17:00.000+01:00

I have just decided to kill off my Twitter account because they, like ATT, Amazon and Yahoo have become the government's bitch. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/29/twitter-anonymous-user-legal-battle For those of you who think that this is not such a big deal, keep in mind that every single thing we do (in the UK) is being monitored: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/02/

Wisconsin is broke? Not so much.

2011-04-11T17:22:00.000+01:00

I am shocked, SHOCKED I say, that a Republican governor may have exaggerated his state's financial crisis in order to advance his own agenda. http://tinyurl.com/3hkx87r

Republican Scorecard (ongoing)

2011-04-05T15:14:00.000+01:00

At this point I don't think they are even pretending to be anything other than Pure Evil. In Maine the GOP is looking to roll-back child labor laws by allowing under-20s to receive less than minimum wage, raise working-time caps on school days and allow 50+ hour work weeks when school is not in session. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/31/maine-republicans-seek-to-loosen-child-labor-laws/

Hertz Marble Arch: DO NOT RENT FROM THEM!

2010-12-22T16:42:00.001Z

I show up to pick up my car; as a Gold member it should be waiting for me, nicely warmed and with a small chocolate on the dashboard (not really). I am greeted by an admittedly nice woman who should have been home in bed with her cold and not spraying germs on the customers and staff. My car? Nowhere to be seen. We search. For 20 minutes the agent and I wander in and out of rows of cars

Not this time Amazon

2010-12-12T19:06:00.001Z

I just finished all my on-line holiday shopping without giving a penny to Amazon; it wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. Normally, 99% of all the cash I drop on gifts throughout the year goes to Amazon. With friends and relatives dotted around the world, Amazon makes it easy for me to point-and-shoot presents wherever and whenever I need to send them. Not this time. With very

Hypocrisy Continues

2010-12-12T17:55:00.002Z

Visa and MasterCard won't let you donate to WikiLeaks but donating to the KKK is still A-OK: http://tinyurl.com/2682pu2

WikiLeaks Mirrors

2010-12-10T15:41:00.002Z

The main site is getting hit by DoS attacks but can still be reached by IP: http://213.251.145.96/ Currently there are over 1300 mirrors and they can be found here: http://wikileaks.challet.eu/mirrors.html

Boycott Amazon NOW!

2010-12-10T15:37:00.000Z

Hello Amazon? Do you sell dictionaries? Open one up and read me the definition of "irony". Great. Now find a copy of the US Constitution and take a look at the first amendment- it says something about freedom of the press and of speech right? You guys are all for that aren't you? I mean, if it weren't for the First Amendment you'd mostly be selling cat calendars and bibles. You are pretty

Total so far

2010-12-09T23:54:00.000Z

The Republican's are not even technically in control of Congress yet but they have already chalked up some impressive victories: Extending tax cuts to the super rich- all over but the shouting Raising the inheritance tax threshold to $5 million- all but done Keeping "Don't ask, don't tell" in place- check Block health care for 9/11 rescue workers- check Blocking a sensible path to citizenship

To the Barricades

2010-12-09T15:34:00.000Z

For the past 90 minutes a police helicopter has been hovering over our building, keeping an eye on the mass of protesters trying to push their way to Westminster: the campaign against raising student fees continues apace. I have to admit, as much as I like a good street protest, I haven't thrown my lot in with the students on this one. The reason is quite a simple one and can be summed up like

No shame

2010-12-06T14:27:00.000Z

Let me get this straight: Republicans are extending tax cuts to the rich (and "middle-class" people making $200K) and yet they are screaming about the deficit being too high? They hold up jobless benefits for people who can't afford food for their kids so that their rich patrons can have another stack of cash? Poor people spend the extra money you give them and rich people save it- which

Back in the Saddle

2010-08-02T01:14:00.005+01:00

The masters of my universe bestowed upon me a small travel budget to do some auditing visits to 14 of our European sites. 14 is a far cry from the 80+ anual trips I've been making for the past five years but I'll take what I can get because since Feb I have been confined to an overly air-conditioned office and a job that consists of brain sucking conference calls and e-mail. Since my grounding

New Next Thing

2010-05-16T16:36:00.002+01:00

Well, it's all over, even the shouting. Brown is gone, Nick and Dave are having a love-in at Number 10 and I am surprisingly calm about it all. Strange bedfellows indeed and I'm sure there are more than a few party hacks wondering exactly what was in the Kool-Aid which allowed these two warring factions from the Right and Left to slip so smoothly into the sack. The Deal is public, all 12 pages

Democracy how?

2010-04-25T17:31:00.001+01:00

I've done my share of left-wing rabble rousing over the years, mostly for noble but doomed causes. I've marched in the streets, put up posters, knocked on doors, signed petitions, handed out fliers and tricked myself into believing that the good people of [fill in whatever city, state or country I have lived in] would see the intrinsic justice of whatever cause I was advocating. I hung on to

Remote Control

2010-02-20T23:43:00.000Z

I've been grounded. I knew this was going to happen. They made a bunch of us IT geeks redundant at the end of last year and now we are a much leaner team (read "wild-eyed and panicked"). My former colleague is now my boss and is running the show but he is doing the work of five and hasn't come out of his office in a week . He kept calling and e-mailing me over my holiday saying "when are

Best and Worst

2010-01-30T16:28:00.000Z

The best thing anyone ever said to me: "Holding you feels like home." The worst thing anyone ever said to me: "I wasn't just worried I was pregnant, I was afraid that it was yours." Thankfully not said by the same person.

20 years ago today

2009-11-09T21:48:00.000Z

November 9th, 1989. My wife Elizabeth and I were hold up in some dilapidated campground in Tennessee. We managed to pitch our tent just before the heavens opened up and transformed our surroundings into a muddy bog. I had turned 24 the day before and in celebration we abstained from our normal diet of tuna fish sandwiches and potato chips and splurged on a fancy restaurant, Shoney's. Being

Apostrophe was not a Greek philosopher

2009-10-13T13:01:00.001+01:00

As threatened, a much needed and highly subjective little primer on the use of apostrophes. Pay attention class. For several months the horrid pub on our corner displayed the following sign, see if you can spot the problem: Toilet's are for customer's use only! The correct answer is, of course, that the sign is redundant. No one who wasn't suicidally insane would ever think of entering one

You there! Listen up!

2009-10-03T15:49:00.006+01:00

It is beyond my limited mental powers to understand how anyone could be let out of school without knowing the correct usage of THEIR, THERE and THEY'RE. I have just read an otherwise insightful article about evolutionary theory in which the author utterly destroyed his credibility by mixing up "their" and "they're" not once, not twice but three times. It's a schoolboy error- if you happen to be

Finland, Finland, Finland

2009-09-24T18:44:00.003+01:00

Thursday evening in Helsinki. I just arrived and had a quick walk around. I've been to Finland several times before but have always stayed slightly outside the town centre. My observations thus far: * These people really need to turn down their air conditioning. Seriously, the taxi in from the airport felt like I was riding in a refrigerated lorry and my room could double as a meat locker * Like

Get OUT!

2009-09-24T16:57:00.007+01:00