First We Take Manhattan

Microsoft take 2

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 11:37:54 +0200

OK.

Let's see if it'll pick it up now.

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test

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:39:26 +0200

Just to see if it turns up in my RSS feed

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The redoubtable Zidane

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:24:54 +0200

I've left it a bit late, but thanks Dave for this.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/13/zidane_headbutt_outrage/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/13/zidane_headbutt_outrage/page2.html

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Words - don't you just love 'em?

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 16:25:07 +0200

I got these from a piece in today's paper. It was in the Independent on Sunday, but they didn't put it on their website, so now you've missed it for ever.

Unless otherwise mentioned, they're Arabic. They've come to us through that route because the Arabs got the knowledge and skills passed down from Greeks and Romans (through the Byzantines), Persians, Egyptians and Indians.

sukkar = sugar
qandi = candi
laymun = lemon
naranj = orange
albirquq = apricot (thus Albuquerque)
sharab = syrup
alqili = alkali (lit saltwort ashes)
al anbiq = still (alembic)
al kuhl = alcohol (used in a still to make kohl, a cosmetic)
champna = shampoo (lit. to knead, from the Hindi)
qutn = cotton
pay jamah = pyjamas (foot garment, from the Persian, whose pyjamas originally included slippers)
suffah = sofa
al qubbah = alcove (lit. arch)
tulban = tulips (lit. turban, from the Turkish, tulips being considered to look a bit like a turban)
koshke = kiosk (lit. garden pavilion)

And don't get me started on mathematics. No really, you actually don't want to.

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Peacekeepers

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:06:08 +0200

It's lovely to be back, and to celebrate I'm doing this one in imperial purple.

The nice folks at blogco have given us a new editor, with colours and fonts and stuff. They've even given us animated emoticons - .

Not that I'll ever be using one again, obviously. Or the colours. Somehow, I don't think Marcus Aurelius would have approved.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about this. Apparently, when Hadrian's Wall was a frontier post, the defenders included a unit of "bargemen from the Tigris". Or as we'd call them, Iraqis. Probably from somewhere near Basra.

You couldn't make it up.

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It's here!

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 13:02:04 +0200

Yes, it's here at last, so you can all dry those tears and stop worrying.

http://sport.fatgeek.org/manhattan/

There will be:

Match reports
Squads, results, scorers, tables
Redundant statistical analysis of the most gratuitously pointless kind - you know you love it
Crude and unnecessary gossip and commentary
A short history of (some of) the countries taking part

At the moment, there's not much in place, as none of it's happened yet. There are the histories, as history can be defined as the set of things which have happened, and can therefore be written about.

Watch the fatgeek space too, as it will one day contain Simon's geeky guide to weight loss.

Enjoy

Jon

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World Cup Song

Mon, 29 May 2006 12:24:22 +0200

Thank you Alice for this.

http://uk.sports.yahoo.com/world-cup-2006/world-cup-song/index.html

World Cup blog grand unveiling soon, I promise. I know you're all on tenterhooks.

Cheers

Jon

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Ballo

Mon, 22 May 2006 18:45:43 +0200

From the world of football, a heart-warming story.

Don't get to say that very often.

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Normal service not yet resumed

Thu, 18 May 2006 15:40:20 +0200

On this blog, service for the next 6 weeks or so will be intermittent and frankly a little cursory, as our spectacular new World Cup project is prepared.

Our spectacular project, you were wondering? Yes, it's too complicated for my little brain, so I've let my technogimp out of his rathole for the duration. Take a bow, lad, and get back to your housework. Yes you do have to wear that, and I don't care how cold it is. Oooh, goosebumps.

There will be a wonderful new website with a blog section for games and news updates, a history section full of fascinating stories about the countries taking part, and a statistical section full of squads, results, tables and the kind of aimless data parsing I love and you've learned to endure. You're all invited, obviously, it really wouldn't be the same without you.

Here's a little titbit to get you going - in all the world, which two club teams have the most representatives in the 32 World Cup squads? Chelsea and Arsenal, with a whopping 17 and 15 players respectively. That is of course an average of exactly 1 Arsenal or Chelsea player for every country in the competition. Let's hope they don't all travel on the same plane at any time. On the other hand, if they did, and if the worst did happen, it could make a new reality TV series - a mixture of Lost, Match of the Day and Celebrity Love Island. Sol Campbell, at least, would be much happier, and would make a lovely Juliet to John Terry's Romeo.

Although scoring in last night's Champions League Final will hopefully have perked him up a bit, even if it didn't go their way in the end. Cue the usual verbal dyspepsia from Wenger, this time backed up by Henry, who one might traditionally associate with rather better digestion. I thought Barcelona were the better team, and their first goal was (marginally) not offside.

And the Bristol team with the most players at the World Cup? That would be well-known worldshakers Bristol City, with 1 player (Luke Wilkshire for Australia). Not a huge roster, but it is an infinite number of times more than Rovers have.

I'll let you know when the new site is ready to be seen by the great unwashed, but until then you'll just have to be patient. Watch this space.

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FA Cup

Sat, 13 May 2006 19:58:21 +0200

Well, that was quite a good game, wasn't it?

Gerrard's goal was the memorable moment, of course. Firstly because it took the game to extra time, secondly because it was such a great goal, but mainly because it meant he wasn't that badly hurt, and would be able to play in the World Cup.

And for those of you who think the FA Cup is all about the little teams, here's a statistic. The top 5 FA Cup teams of the last 30 years are: Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs and Chelsea, and during that time at least one of those teams has been in the Final every year except one.

Yes, that's right, Everton v Watford, 1984. 2-0 to Everton, goals by Sharp and Gray. I knew you'd remembered.

Now, Doctor Who, then the pub. Oh tis bliss to be alive, but to be young would presumably be very heaven.

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Revenge is sweetest in the Marriott hotel

Mon, 08 May 2006 20:03:01 +0200

It couldn't really have been much worse for Spurs. Needing a win against West Ham to guarantee a Champions League place, they lost half their team to food poisoning. Losing 2-1 to West Ham was bad enough, losing that qualifying spot probably stung, but losing it to Arsenal must have really rather smarted.

Spurs agony and Arsenal joy must have fed off each other that day. It was Arsenal's last competitive fixture at Highbury, before they move to the brand new Emirates stadium (yes, I know), and they couldn't have wished for a better sendoff.

Tests are now being carried out to find out where Spurs got poisoned. If it does turn out that it was in the Marriott hotel, where they had lunch, then the court case could be interesting. In failing to qualify, Tottenham may have lost as much as £15m in revenue, and could conceivably sue for a percentage of it.

You may recall the Arsenal Spurs game recently, when Arsene Wenger accused Spurs of cheating. Fanciful conspiracy theories about revenge poisoning are already emerging, so watch this space.

Both managers, being European and therefore at least vaguely literate, must surely have a working knowledge of the Greek myths. How long before Jol feeds Wenger his own children, baked in a pie?

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The romance is back

Mon, 08 May 2006 17:30:34 +0200

Eriksson has announced the squad, and there's some surprises.

No Defoe, and no Bent, but he has gone for untried newcomer Theo Walcott.

Walcott has just come to Arsenal from Southampton, but he's yet to play any Premiership games. Also, he's just seventeen. Ah, do you remember what it was like? Were you a dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen ... Personally, I was more like one of those with ravaged faces, lacking in the social graces, but Walcott clearly hails from the ranks of the jeunesse dore, and is immune to such gaucherie.

It's real Roy of the Rovers stuff, isn't it? I can see what's coming. England lose their best eleven players in training, in a bizarre multiple metatarsal pile-up, and Walcott is in. Outclassed for the first two games, he finds his feet, knocks in a hat-trick to beat Brazil and scores the winning penalty against Germany in the final.

He'd better, anyway. No pressure, son, but we're all counting on you.

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Not long now

Sun, 07 May 2006 14:43:14 +0200

Not much recently, I'm afraid.

I've been busy, though. For the World Cup, something new.

That's all you get - there's a reason why they call these things teasers ...

Shortly after two o'clock on Tuesday, it will be less time to the World Cup than the World Cup will last. Celebrate with some kind of sugar-based treat, is my advice. We'll all be needing our strength, and sugar does give you extra energy, before eventually giving you extra mass.

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The Tao of Rooney

Thu, 04 May 2006 16:17:01 +0200

Wayne Rooney was described today on the BBC website as being "philosophical" about his prospects for the World Cup. I hadn't ever thought of him as being especially Stoical, and there's certainly little of the Epicurean about him, so his inspiration must be coming from one of the more modern schools. Apparently they've got him in an oxygen chamber, so maybe the richer atmosphere is getting to him. Or maybe they're giving him smart pills - I just hope they've left a few for the rest of us.

Meanwhile, we're waiting to hear that Steve McClaren has got the nod for manager. I'm sure he'll be fine, really I am.

After such a bumbling fiasco, it's nice to know that at least one of our domestic clubs knows how to get what they want.

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May the 4th

Thu, 04 May 2006 12:41:44 +0200

Greetings on this glorious day. May the fourth be with you.

(Tee hee)

The old ones are the best.

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Non Scolari

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 14:42:37 +0200

So, farewell Luiz Felipe Scolari. It turns out our robust Anglo-Saxon media played a little too hard for you. I hope it was nothing I said.

I seem to recall folks getting themselves in a tizzy about media intrusion when one of the minor royals got spread all over a Paris subway on a drunken joyride. It seemed like a lot of fuss over nothing at the time, but now it's happened over something important I can understand the nation's pain.

If anyone wants to come and join the tearful throng laying flowers outside the Brazilian Embassy, I'll be going up by hearse on Monday. How thoughtful of them to arrange a national tragedy for a Bank Holiday weekend. Perhaps a quiet, dignified procession, with Rooney and Owen in the role of the little princes.

For some reason, many of today's papers have been slagging off the FA, as if they themselves were entirely innocent. The Sun, apparently without irony, has revealed this weekend that Middlesbrough manager and England hopeful Steve McClaren had an affair with his secretary, while he and his wife were having a trial separation.

I wasn't exactly gobsmacked that McClaren had had an affair while he wasn't with anybody else, but it was a bit of shock to learn that the guy is only 44 years old. What ever the opposite of virgin's blood is, that what he bathes in.

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Middlesbrough

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:39:37 +0200

Did you see?

DID YOU SEE?

DID YOU SEE?

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Scolari

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:37:40 +0200

The England manager's job has now been offered to Luiz Scolari. Just in case he isn't familiar to you, he's Brazilian, and was manager when Brazil won the last World Cup. He then went to manage Portugal, and led them to the European Cup final in 2004, when they lost to Greece.

Eriksson, as even you will probably know, is leaving after the World Cup. He's not done badly on the field, but unfortunately he's been a bit of a butterfingers off it. He got away with all the silver tongued lounge lizard stuff, if only because serial monogamist football managers are as rare as heterosexual priests, but what really did for him was the News of the World sting.

Reporter Mazher Mahmood, dressed as a Sheikh and pretending to be interested in hiring Eriksson as a sports consultant, got him to say what he really thought on a number of topics, whilst secretly recording their conversation. Among many things, Eriksson said there was a lot of corruption in football (surely not), Michael Owen didn't really want to be at Newcastle (again, surely not) and he wanted to manage Aston Villa (surely NOT). The FA, shocked that anyone would want to manage Villa, released him from his contract so they could get rid of him.

You may have heard of Mahmood. Among his other stings, he caught out the Countess of Wessex, whoever she is, and BBC presenter Richard Bacon.

So, just in case you sell cocaine, sporting knowhow or royal influence, watch out for a man who looks like this.

Opposition to Scolari's appointment has mainly come from people who think the England manager should be English, but it's hard to see who that might be. People have been talking about Sam Allardyce of Bolton and Steve McLaren of Middlesbrough, but their European experience is all in the UEFA Cup. Alan Curbishley, of Charlton, has also been mentioned, but he has no European experience at all. All three have done well with their clubs, but there's just no plausible English England manager out there.

If you look at the Premiership, the highest placed English manager will probably come in sixth. Meanwhile, the most successful teams are dominated by foreign players. This is just a fact.

Howard Wilkinson, commenting on Scolari's appointment, said "I don't think it's in the best interests of English coaches and that is what the FA is primarily there to do - to foster the best interests of English players and English coaches." Umm, no. The FA is primarily there to foster the best interests of English football. Frankly, we ought to be glad a manager of Scolari's standing thinks England is his best option.

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Football updated

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 17:13:44 +0200

It's probably about time I let you know what's going on in the endlessly diverting world of football. I know how much it means to you, but as you're all functionally innumerate it wouldn't really fair to expect you to work it out for yourself from the league tables. I was told off earlier for explaining that you convert kilometres to miles by dividing by eight and timesing by five, because apparently that's too hard to do in your tiny little heads, so when it comes to something this important I'm taking no chances.

Let's start with the news the nation is all agog for, Bristol City's late run at the play offs. After their mid-season brush with motor neurone disease, they needed to win all their last zillion games and hope the other teams slipped up. Well, with two games to go, it's still just about on. City's last 10 games have yielded 25 points out of a possible 30, and their last two games of the season are against Swindon, virtually relegated, and Southend, who by then will be promoted and won't care.

Unfortunately, if Barnsley, Notts Forest and Swansea manage two wins between them goal difference will see City just miss out, but things are looking good for next season.

In the more obvious divisions, Arsenal and Tottenham are currently battling it out for fourth place, and a place in the Champions League next season. As a result, their 1-1 draw yesterday, almost uniquely for that fixture, actually carried some weight outside the pubs of north London.

Given the continental flavour of the modern Premiership, it was a pleasant surprise to get a game with the kind of ill humour that wouldn't seem out of place in a seaside town on a Bank Holiday. It all stemmed from Tottenham's goal, which was scored after two Arsenal players tripped each other up.

Wenger thought Spurs should have put the ball out to allow his players to get treatment, and him and Jol squared up to each other like they were pretending to be English. No-one was fooled, of course, you could see they were actually impugning the quality of each other's onions, but well done for trying. I was particularly impressed with Wenger's assertion that Jol shouldn't pretend he hadn't seen the incident, an evasion Wenger has occasionally been known to stoop to himself.

In the end Henry scored one of his memorable goals, and after the game demonstrated an equal dexterity in his diplomacy, steering an even handed course between the two managers verbally happy-slapping each other, with us in the role of mobile phone.

In the FA Cup, Chelsea and Liverpool's semi-final was on the BBC. Liverpool's first goal came from a free kick that should never have been given, but on the other hand Chelsea are a bunch of sordid mercenaries sucking their blood money from the oily teats of the Russian Mafia, so it was quite fair overall.

And Liverpool won, which means that only Middlesbrough or West Ham stand between them and the FA Cup. It should be a walkover, but then again that's what they said about the Somme. Don't just go charging into the barbed wire, guys, most of you are needed for the World Cup. Which incidentally is now a paltry 47 days away. It's getting harder to get to sleep every night.

And as a tasty little mint with your next post-coital coffee, thanks to Jeff for this from popbitch:

Sheringham scores! Veteran striker's secret: eat own spunk

Anonymous lady writes: "I recently had sex with veteran premiership striker Teddy Sheringham. It was a little impersonal but what do you expect? Great stamina for a 40 year-old though. There were two odd things - he told me he didn't like girls in their thirties. Oh, and he enthusiastically licked his own sperm off my abs."

So, Teddy Sheringham is a spunklicker. Allegedly. I wonder if he ever tried Gary Lineker's.

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St George's Day

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 14:18:23 +0200

A happy St George's Day to one and all, and hands up everyone who knows who he was, and what he's supposed to have done. And no there wasn't a dragon involved. Oh, just watch those hands going down.

Looks like it's debunking time again, then. According to Christian accounts, St George was born in modern-day Turkey, the son of a Roman army officer. His family were Christians, and during the persecution by the Emperor Diocletian he was tortured and beheaded at the city of Nicomedia (modern day Izmit, about 60 miles east of Istanbul), on April 23, 303. Yes, that's 1703 years ago today. Well done. Now don't get me started on Eastern and Western calendars.

Twenty years after his death, the intermittently God-bothering Emperor Constantine added the eastern half of the Roman Empire to his domains (he'd ruled the western half since 306). A church was built to George's memory at Lydda in Palestine, where his mother was from. Nearly 200 years later, he was made a saint, although the Pope responsible, Gelasius, stated at the time that very little was reliably known about his life. There is no solid evidence that he ever even existed.

The whole dragon thing is a common myth across Europe and central Asia. St George has been put in as a symbol of Christianity conquering paganism, the role played by the dragon. Georgieboy has a price for slaughtering the dragon and freeing the maiden, which is that the city has to convert to Christianity. The origins of the myth probably lie in pre-Christian times, like most of the Church's favourite stories.

And incidentally, April 23 isn't Shakespeare's birthday, or at least not definitely. He was baptised on April 26 1564, but his birth date is uncertain. Baptisms were normally done a few days after birth, so after he became our favourite dead white poet everyone agreed to just pretend it was the 23rd for neatness, as he died on April 23rd 1616. Why everyone wanted the poor sod to have died on his birthday, God knows. It does seem a poor return for writing at least some of his plays.

While we're at it, many of his best-known works were written during the reign of James I, not Queen Elizabeth. This includes Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and The Tempest. Hamlet squeaked into Elizabeth's reign by a few months, but wasn't published until after her death.

Bracing, this whole mythbusting thing, isn't it? No-one is ever quite what you'd expect. Next time, Dennis Wise's groundbreaking work on Fermi's paradox.

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Humanity's basic urge to explore?

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 20:34:15 +0200

I was watching one of NASA's modern identikit astronauts on the telly the other day, and someone asked her why she did it. She seemed to be under the illusion that she was following "humanity's basic urge to explore new frontiers".

The question I wanted to ask was, if humanity has such a basic need to explore, how come most of us are consuming your trip through the medium of television?

But hang on, I hear you say, how about humanity's journey from Africa across the whole world? Surely that must show a desire to explore?

Let's look at that, shall we? Archaeological evidence, based on fossil finds and prehistoric artefacts, suggests that humanity spread from Africa along the world's coastlines, and headed inland relatively recently. This process took place at about a mile a year.

A powerful urge to explore? That lasts for one morning's brisk walk every five years? Bollocks, I say.

Why would those prehistoric humans want to go exploring? They were already at the seaside. There was plenty of food, from the sea, the coastline and the immediately available forests, giving three distinct ecologies to plunder. What would be the point?

A more plausible explanation is population pressure. Human coastal existence was so successful, and people had so many children, that they had to keep moving along the margins to find new resources. This process was slow, which was why it moved at a mile a year. Compared with continental drift it's like lightning.

So no strong evidence there, then. And in fact it's very hard to deduce basic urges of any kind. We might for instance argue that Sol Campbell, by having a nervous breakdown and then getting his nose broken in his first game back, was expressing some deep human need to avoid Germany in the summertime, but then again maybe not.

None of which matters a fuck, you might say, and if it was just some bishop or rabbi or something no-one would think twice. This woman is supposed to be a scientist, though, and really ought to know better than to come out with Trekkie crap like this.

There's enough guff on earth, without taking it out into space with us. Unfortunately, though, guff, being lighter than air, obviously tends to rise.

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On not being relegated

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 23:33:23 +0200

And with one bound they were free. Short of changes to the laws of mathematics, Bristol City cannot now be relegated. They could even be promoted, although it would take one hell of a combination of results.

Sunderland, on the other hand, were finally put out of their tragicomedy this weekend, which must have come as a great relief to everyone who cares about them. You can imagine grieving friends and family at the wake, saying how at least they were at peace now, and wasn't it a shame someone couldn't have given them something weeks ago, to end their pain. Unfortunately, the law insists that nature be allowed to take its course, no matter how much suffering is involved.

Elsewhere, proof that football isn't scripted is offered by the Championship, where all the major issues are effectively settled three games from the end. Reading (yes, Reading) and Sheffield Utd are promoted, Leeds, Watford, Preston and Crystal Palace are in the playoffs, and short of a miracle Brighton, Crewe and Millwall are relegated.

And promoted from the Conference, meanwhile, guess who? Accrington Stanley, that's who. Now, now, no need to come over all slushy like that. You'll have to excuse me, I've got something in my eye ...

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Human sacrifice

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 15:13:34 +0200

Suppose when you woke up tomorrow, you found yourself, for no good reason, in Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztecs.

You'd be bedazzled at first. The island in a lagoon would remind you of Venice, and there'd be the astronomy, the arts, the advanced education system. Eventually, though, their habit of sacrificing prisoners of war to the gods would get you down.

They didn't do it for entertainment, you understand. They did it because they though the gods needed sacrifice, and if they didn't get enough they'd bring the world to an end out of sheer pique.

An important part of the process was to take the bleached bones from the sacrifices, and stick them around your property. All upstanding citizens did this, as it showed a proper respect for the gods.

So you'd have nothing to do with it, obviously. There wouldn't be much you could do about it, though. The gods needed sacrifices, and there wouldn't be much tolerance of bleeding heart liberals refusing to face up to their responsibilities.

And in the end it wouldn't seem so strange. You'd be living there, after all, and you'd have to adapt. You might never actually stab anyone, or even collect the blood, but you'd probably join the party, and maybe you'd get a second hand thighbone for when you had friends round.

It's a handy metaphor, human sacrifice. By using something which everyone finds abhorrent, you can describe the feeling of living in a society you yourself are out of step with to someone who doesn't feel that way.

But there's another advantage. If you'd asked at the time, people would probably have thought human sacrifice was an inevitable part of human life. Yet today, apart from fundamentalist fantasies about Satanists, it's disappeared from the face of the world. If human sacrifice can disappear from the world, so can racism, sexism and opening hours. Oh yeah, one of them already has. It's just a question of making it happen.

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Being a pro

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 14:35:06 +0200

Well, I've given in, and given them some money to shut up about religious artefacts and Arsenal credit cards. It was only £25 for the year, and I couldn't be bothered to relocate, with all the hassle involved.

Also, I'm now a Pro, which makes me sound serious, with just a hint of sordid.

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Cheese with bits in it

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 21:17:18 +0200

Excuse me madam, I wish to make a complaint. Why does your cheese with bits in it always let me down?

It really didn't ought to. For one thing, most of it is cheese. The rest of it is made of something nice enough that someone thought it would actually be better than more cheese. Surely the whole thing ought to be more ennobling than enervating.

Well, that's not the way it turns out. Time and again, I end up walking away from the supermarket with cheese with bits in, urgently seeking a frantic half hour alone with a bag of bread rolls, and every time it leaves me as unrelieved as Celia Johnson after a close encounter at a train station. I've learnt not to be conned by fruit in cheese, despite its sordid come-ons, but I really thought cheddar with sundried tomatoes could be the one. They're nice enough when you get them separately, for Christ's sake. But no, it's rubbish.

Cheese with huge great veins running through it all manky and rotted, though, that's the bee's knees. I just don't understand it.

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World Cup songs

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 17:31:56 +0200

The official England World Cup song will of course be by well known band Embrace, who are "a British guitar band, coming from the Brighouse area in the north of England", as we all knew.

The official song for us jaded old farts is this one, and click here for some golden balls.

You didn't bother, did you? Well, the next World Cup final will be played with a gold coloured ball, and the winners get to use the same design in all their games for the next four years. As I recall, cyclists do something similar with jerseys.

That's all it was. What did you expect, news? Insight? Give over.

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Adverts update

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 17:07:58 +0200

After banging on about religion ad nauseam it seemed my adverts policy was set, and no matter how disrespectful I was the software would continue to classify my blog as a great place to try and move some church supplies, and get those lonely Muslim singles married off. Any distaste I might feel for the competing banalities of cross, crescent and candle stick clearly counted for nothing.

Not any more. One piece about the wonders of Arsenal, and suddenly they're all hot under the jockstrap for credit cards and away strips. Talk about fickle. It's a good thing God is dead, or he'd be mortified.

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Why can't Sundays be more like the one in the Nico song?

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 18:41:52 +0200

I should have been out today, really. I was going to go on Jackie's birthday walk, but after last night I wasn't really up to it. I might have managed a birthday stand, or a birthday speak, but a birthday stand-and-speak would have been a step too far, and a walk would have taxed me beyond endurance.

Before all the shenannigans last night, we really tried to have some kind of a cultural day, but Kingswood Museum was closed. No, we didn't know either, and now we still don't. We did manage to have a poke around the Catholic cathedral in Clifton, though, which was nice. I like Catholics better, on balance, despite transsubstantiation and no condoms. They'd just had a service, and the air was heavy with incense. You have to warm to men who wear frocks and stink like hippies.

I will write more soon, I promise, I know how empty you all feel inside when I don't, but today I'm just too clouded over.

Joke of the weekend, courtesy of Dylan Moran, talking about those scandals where politicians or celebrities are caught in hotel rooms with prostitutes and cocaine. "And everyone carries on like it's all so shocking, but I ask you, if you're in a hotel room with some prostitutes, what else are you supposed to give them?" Genius.

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The beauty of Arsenal

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 12:16:04 +0200

I love Saturdays so much, Sunday is almost an anticlimax, coming as it does without a 24 hour buffer against Monday. Saturday is the day when my childless, fancy free lifestyle choices pay off.

It starts with the folk dance of the modern metrophile, the one where we hold the Guardian over the recycle bin and shake vigorously, carries on through crosswords, Sudoku and obsessively-checking-how-City-are-doing-on-the-Teletext, and climaxes (metaphorically, you understand) with Match of the Day. Which is where Arsenal come in.

Football teams often remind me oddly of the kids we knew at school. Man Utd are the athletic types, uncouth and illiterate anywhere but the sports field, and Chelsea are the rich kids with no social graces but a sycophantic coterie culled from the ranks of the venal and the easily impressed.

Arsenal are the cool guys you envied but still liked. You remember, the boys that were handsome and knew how to dance, but read Kerouak and Hesse as well.

They beat Juventus in the week, setting themselves up for a probable Champions League semifinal, and yesterday demolished Aston Villa 5-0 with the kind of imperious elan you'd associate with a regiment of Hussars romping across a Metteleuropean field towards the cannons. In the lead, sabre in hand as the sweat collects around his pommel, it could only be Thierry Henry.

Incidentally, if any of you are looking for a project, reread Dharma Bums and The Glass Bead Game and tell me if they're actually any good. I'm guessing not, to be honest, but you never know.

Elsewhere, Sunderland striker Jon Stead managed to score his first goal for Sunderland after 23 hours and 19 minutes of football played. Well done, lad, now no-one can say you couldn't score if you played all day.

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Microsoft and the church

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 19:49:21 +0200

There really isn't enough sport on television, is there? No there isn't. Similarly, I've always felt there just aren't enough conspiracy theories in the world. Here's my modest attempt to fill the gap.

The current standard version of Windows is called XP. Try reading that as Greek letters. You'll get Chi, and Rho, which in English would be rendered as Chr. This was an early Christian abbreviation for Christ.

So, when they call it Windows XP they're really calling it Windows for Jesus. By the standards of the religious, I have just proved this.

When you consider the history of the early Christian church, this makes perfect sense. An initial hubbub of contrary voices, which was turned into one unified, Catholic church under the aegis of the emperor Constantine, followed by the persecution of all the other leading brand names.

What better strategy for Microsoft? Watch out for Bill Gates and the Pope on the Vatican balcony any day now, announcing the merger of Microsoft and the Catholic Church, and the excommunication of anyone associated with Linux or Macintosh. Can witch burnings really be far behind?

Of course, you might say this post was a conspiracy to rope in anyone googling on these tags, but surely you'd trust me to rise above that sort of thing.

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