Author: Mosh

Sorry for the gaps, folks. I have a coursework due in this week (actually yesterday but I’ve got an extension to the 10th) so I’m slightly busy. Forgot to post anything yesterday!

Open letter to Jacques Chirac

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

You prick.

The Sun in factual cockup shocker (tits on page 3)

The Sun are quoted as printing “If you’re not proud to be British… you’re probably French” in today’s “we won the Olympic bid, ya boo sucks snail-eaters” edition.

Now, excuse my pickiness but mathematically and statistically speaking you’re actually more likely to probably be Chinese. Or American. Or Canadian. Or African… as there are more of them than the French.

Wow. Surprise. Another factual inaccuracy in a British tabloid.

Probably going to get some flack for this, but…

We all know about the shocking events in London this morning. I don’t even need to re-emphasise what I think of terrorists but I’d like to sidetrack slightly and comment on some related statements.

Number one was Bush-monkey jumping on the bandwagon and saying that this proved that his precious “fight against tererorerorizzzmmm” had to continue until it was won. Problem is that it’s not a “fight” I can ever see having a victor. It’ll never end. Add to that the fact that if we weren’t involved in his little personal crusade, there’d likely be 30+ people still alive this afternoon.

Secondly, a stamenent I heard as part of Ken Livingstone’s otherwise fairly uplifting speech (even if the guy has the oral charisma of a wet sponge). He emphasised the cowardly nature of the attacks on people going about their daily lives, heading to work and so on. Innocent, harmless citizens.

I draw the jury’s attention to the number of innocent Iraqis killed by stray bullets, bombs and missiles. Those slaughtered deliberately as a result of bad intelligence, or pure weapon-related overkill. While I cannot and never will condone terrorism – or what the US (and sadly also us) are doing in Iraq – it just smacks of hypocrisy to more or less say that Iraqi civilians don’t count while ours do. You can argue that our citizens were deliberately targetted, but I recall one wedding party being wiped out by a US missile because someone thought they might be Al Quaeda. Dead innocents are dead innocents, regardless of how they end up like that.

Having said that, I just wish I believed in a hell so that I could satisfy myself with the knowledge that the ***** who committed those foul acts this morning would spend eternity burning there. Instead, I just hope we can capture them and lose our copy of the Geneva Convention down the back of the sofa, the same way Bush has.

Regular readers may recall that I plan (still do!) to add a separate bar down the right with charity links in. Time and an inability to correctly decode the HTML that lays out this page have prevented me from doing so up till now, but please do keep mailing any links in. At the very least, they’ll get popped on here. I don’t get a massive number of hits, but for the sake of an email it doesn’t hurt to try.

Two to let you know about:

158 Grounds In One (decimal) Week

Two Stafford Rangers supporters who visited every ground in the Premiership, Championship, Conference and the Conference feeder leagues in 10 days. That’s 158 grounds and a shade under 3500 miles. The task was completed a week or so ago and pictures are now online.

Donations are split between Stafford Rangers, MIND (a mental health charity) and MacMillan Cancer Relief. They take PayPal and for a tenner you can sponsor one of the grounds they couldn’t get anyone to cough up for. There are about 40 of them. Notably, the only Premiership clubs not to get a sponsor were Sunderland and Middlesbrough. So NUFC.com sponsored them as well, hence the massages displayed on their pages… You don’t have to pay a whole tenner, though. Even a quid will help.

80km walk across Iceland

Barny’s a guy I know through the 2000AD web pages and the old newsgroups before that. As the title suggests, he’s off to the land of fire next year to walk 80,000m in aid of the Alzheimer’s Society. His aim – one pound per metre.

You can donate in various ways, but if you’re a UK tax payer then payment can be made subject to Gift Aid regulations and Barny gets an extra 28p on the pound.

If either of these appeals, give them some dosh. Doing something yourself? Let me know.

An amazing thing happened today. One of those near once-in-a-lifetime events. It coincided with the G8 conference convening in Scotland, and took place in a fenced-off area of grassland. Much celebration resulted.

Yes. I mowed the lawn.

Well, when I say “mowed”, what I mean is “assaulted with a neighbour’s strimmer then ripped chunks up by hand” as it was far too long (about 2′ in places) to actually mow. I did the front as well. Now I have blisters and I’m knackered.

I’ve also sent off two courseworks, so I’m going downstairs to drink plonk and watch DVDs.

For the first time since getting back from Graspop, I’ve been able to dig out a bogie and chomp on it without it crunching. I have finally gotten all the sodding dust out of my nostrils.

Time for a slimey green snack.

Scotland, I salute you

As well as giving is the Beano and Dandy, managing to devolve itself to maintain a national identity and have proper 24/7 shopping, as of March 2006 Scotland is pretty much a public no smoking zone.

Utterly, utterly fantastic. I just wish our weak-willed, money-led, pathetic so-called “government” would do some ******* governing rather than taking baby steps in matters like this.

You know, I love my country. I’m English, even if my family is 1/4 Welsh and 3/4 Scots. I was born on Tyneside and I’m bloody proud of where I was born and raised. Still, between the moves Scotland is making towards a positive, healthy future and the wonderful time I had recently in Europe I’m seriously thinking about the viability of moving.

I probably won’t, but just the fact that I’m even considering it says how much I think this country (England) is going down the shitter. Thanks a ******* bunch, Blair. Thank **** we know you won’t be running next time, at least.

Spam this

Oh dear. I got a spam today. From someone stupid enough to leave their name and phone number on it. Oh dear, oh dear. “Promote Moshville in Sunday Telegraph Magazine Midsummer issues” it proclaims. “Why the **** would I want to do that?” I wonder. The email address they’ve leached is off the front page of this site. Go have a look at it – it’s an obviously out-of-date studenty home page.

Anyway, I called him. I have witnesses if you don’t believe me. He’s called Adam White, he works for WebWindows and he’s on 0207 649 9712. I’m sure he’ll be happy to talkto you, too. All of you. One after another. Day after day.

First I asked what the charges were. Around £495 for a certain column size and a circulation of 1.5 million which, he assured me, is very good value. So… what kind of business was my site related to?

“Well, actually, it’s a 4-year out-of-date personal home page. Is that the sort of thing Telegraph readers are after these days?”

This seemed to surprise him. He giggled. Well, he guffawed a bit. You know the kind of laugh someone gives when they think they’re being wound up.

“Can I ask where you got my email address from?”

“Well, we have a team of researchers upstairs who’s job it is to scan the web for sites based on certain topics and themes…”

“Right, so the Sunday Telegraph readership currently has a high demographic interested in looking at personal pages that haven’t been updated in four years?”

“Well, sometimes sites slip through…”

“Sometimes? Slip through? I own four domain names. Every one of them has received a form email from you, exactly the same with no change other than the domain name. One of these is a blank page with ‘under construction’ on it. I think your researchers need to start reading dictionaries instead of domain lists. Perhaps they’re not sure of the definition of ‘research'”

“Erm… if you give me those domain names, I’m sure we can…”

“No. You’ve already got them. I’m not giving you them again so you can add me to more spam lists. I’m not stupid. I never click on the ‘unsubscribe’ links either because they only prove that the email addresses are valid so people like you can hammer me with more crap, like pills to make my nob bigger. No, what I suggest is you take your entire list and wipe it, then start again with new staff. Or buy a different spam list, which is more likely what you’ve done. Or maybe your so-called researchers are actually a bunch of PCs running robots that just harvest email addresses from web pages?”

“I’ll see what we can…”

“Actually, I’ve got your office address as well. I know. Next time I’m in London, I’ll pop by shall I? Sit in your lobby and drink coffee. After all, it’s only your time and money I’ll be wasting. I’m sure you have plenty of both – you certainly seem to think I do.”

“Yes, well, thank you…”

“Don’t thank me. Just stop spamming people. You’re up there with the other morons trying to convince me they can cure cancer. Goodbye. Tosser.”

*click*

Allen then asked me that, if I was in that mood, could I please call up Dilbert.com and complain that their servers are running too slow. Anyone got their number?