Dante’s Handcart

Flicking through the pages of the internet the other day I stumbled upon an interview with rap music’s 50 Cent.  50, known for such songs as “In Da Club” (a ballad about the shortcake inside chocolate biscuits) and, um, that one where he sings about his mum kissing a girl, has a brand new album called ‘Curtis’ coming out on September 11th; the exact same day as dance floor nemesis Kanye “Milk Me” West.  Fiddy - real name Curtis James Jackson III - proved to be disparaging of Kanye in talking with Complex Magazine:

“I think it makes good sense for Kanye West to keep his date the same as 50 Cent.  First I was like, “What is he doing?” like, “It’s gonna kill him.”  …  He already knows that he doesn’t mind being number two because he knows he’s going to be number two” 50 Cent, referring to himself in the third person

Curtis, Curtis, Curtis.  Have you learnt nothing from your namesake, Curtis Stigers, who so famously predicted himself off of the billboard chart with his overexagerated boasts?  (Stigers, in an interview with a surprisingly lucid Cher, told fans ”there’s no need for you, listening to me now, to even buy the single - I’m number one and no shit can change that”; record sales amounted to three copies, at least two of which were bought erroneously according to anecdotal reports)

(more…)

As US elections shift ever closer, aides close to the President are growing increasingly frustrated with trying to explain to Bush that he won’t be up for re-election.  George W, who was memorably described as “a towering pillock” last year by a tipsy Earl of Lancaster, is seemingly unaware of the constitutional rules describing just two consecutive terms of office.

“It’s got to the point where he’s in my office at least twice a day, rubbing his hands together and saying “Right, when are we hitting the campaign trail?”  It’s beginning to get right on my tits.  We’ve seriously considered sedating him” Anonymous White House Source

(more…)

The world of science is in a turmoil today with the news that donations from middle-class people have no affect on cancer research.  The shock discovery, the result of a three year longitudinal study in association with the London School of Economics, has shown, that despite cash injections from guilty benefactors riding a high tide of property prices and a strong pound, medical advancements in fields as diverse as breast and bowel cancer to leukaemia have not been advanced one iota.

“We thought it was a mistake at first … until the test results came back in.  Even sterile swaps bought with middle-class money end up a bit dirty.  You may as well piss it up the wall; we’ve been buying photocopier paper and beer bongs, it’s bloody useless” Anonymous Researcher, CTSU Oxford University

(more…)

RnB croonster Ne-Yo ”hit me up” on my “celly” in the early hours of this morning (poor lad can never figure out the timezones) to ask my advice on which flat-screen TV he should purchase for his “crib”.  After an hilarious mix-up involving baby cots that went on for at least an hour, we eventually got down to the fact that he was looking for something suitably “bling” in the $2,500 to $3,500 bracket, preferably 48-inches or larger.  Of course you don’t have to be a hit-record selling artiste to have trouble deciding on a new tech-toy; I’ve no doubt that many potential buyers have found themselves unpleasantly moist-palmed at the thought of differentiating between dozens of products that ostensibly seem the same.

Choice, then, is crippling us.  Once upon a time there were only two choices facing us: plague or no-plague, and only the masochistic or confused went for the former.  Now, if you wander into your local plague emporium, you’re faced with bubonic, Ebola-based or any number of genetically-modified derivatives for 100% of the fresh plague taste you love but with only half the calories.  A telemarketer tried to sell me a pox very low on the glycemic index last week, and wouldn’t get off the phone until I’d listened to his entire spiel about how own-brand supermarket diseases have been shown to be bulked with inverted sugar syrup.

In fact it seems that the big chain foodstores can do no right at the moment.  Only this past Friday did the British media frot themselves into a frenzy of gnashed cellophane at the news that some ready-made sandwiches contain as much salt as eight bags of crisps (that’s chips for my American friends, and кексы for any Russians reading).  Jim Winship, director of the British Sandwich Association, balefully retorted that “meat is salty” while saving his tears to pour over a prawn-mayo baguette he was making for some small children. 

(more…)

Like many, my day rarely starts in earnest until I’ve had a cup of coffee.  Instant coffee is the work, of course, of a bitter little scientist with poor personal hygiene and very, very small genitals, who wished to take out his angst on the rest of us, and so I have a dinky little cafetiere at work.  Thing is, it’s still got enough for a few big mugs with some to spare, and while that’s a delicious caffeine buzz I have to be careful unless I want my wagging tongue to tell management a few home-truths. 

So let me introduce my latest gadget review, only this isn’t so much of a gadget and it’s not going to be much of a review; the SmartCafé cafetiere mug.  A double-walled plastic mug with built-in French-press-style plunger mechanism, it promises an individual cup of steaming coffee without me having to wastefully pour away the rest of the jug.

(more…)

Last night my significant other, our robot cat and I were playing a lively game of “Fuck Off I’m Al Gore”.  It’s a popular pastime, currently sweeping the nation’s schoolyards and prison quadrangles, in which you compete to think up scenarios - novelty interviews, station idents, charity whimsy - so extreme or ridiculous that eco-Al would say “fuck off, I’m Al Gore” with a sense of astonished injustice.  The great thing about FOIAG is that you can substitute any notable celebrity; I understand “Fuck Off I’m Michael Howard” is particularly popular among some Labour backbenchers.  Anyway, votes were equally split over whether Al would queue up for a few days for an Apple iPhone: pros were that he’d appreciate the headline grabbing with the minimal of traditional advertising; cons however were that he’d be reluctant to wear the same suit for a few days in a run.

Mike Peake in today’s Sunday Times recalls an interviewwith the Gorester, who’s undergoing something of a publicity flurry right now with his Live Earth concert malarkey and trying desperately to make environmental issues sexy.  Al could take a leaf out of other growth industries such as rhinoplasty, terrorism and auto-erotic asphyxiation; the attacks in the UK this week have been automatically attributed to fundamentalist Islamic extremists, myopically ignoring the controversial public smoking ban that came into force today.

My theory is that, with the anti-smoking lobby receiving a much-needed fellate-in-the-bushes with the new clean-air legislation, irate tobacco-hounds have staged a number of aggressive protests aimed at significant locations in smoking lore: Glasgow Airport, home of duty-free bulk-buy fags, and a popular nightclub in London, such establishments being a common place for smokers to “light up”. 

As the UK government, newly under the baleful eye of Gordon “Marrowbone” Brown reacts with the inevitable nicotine ID patches and mandatory registration with the police for convicted cigarette-users, we can expect to see howls of protest unfurled across newspapers and pamphlets, keeping the topic firmly in the public eye.  And what do the the eco-mutterers give us?  A Toyota Prius and a glass of organic orange juice.  For shame!

Buried in among a number of bizarre articles in today’s Times Online content (including accusations by cheesemakers that the government is waging an anti-cheese agenda and the news that the average walking speed has risen by 10-percent since 1994), CNET editor Michael Parsons reveals himself to be a surprising GPS luddite.  His argument is that “it’s cheating“:

“Eventually affluent people in the developed world will start to forget what it was like to be lost - just as we are all beginning to forget what research was like before Google”

Lest I tread on the toes of any sat-nav companies or inadvertently bugger an NDA agreement other, more in-touch bloggers have been observing, I firmly believe that we’ll see a range of GPS devices with in-built randomiser chips.  This high-tech “get lost” function will, according to a user-set ratio of likelihood, randomly choose a journey to scupper with poor directions and general topographical ignorance.

Obviously, with the number of people who blindly obey their sat-nav and find themselves half submerged in the nearest flooded road, manufacturers will have to work hard to out-stupid the general public.  I can only assume that they’ll take ‘Celebrity Voice Directions’ to their logical conclusion and instill the intelligence of celebrity dullards into their dashboard map-manglers.  Let’s hope the day that we can all invest in a little George W. Bush to drive us round the bend comes soon enough to satisfy Michael.

I realise most spam is done by mindless machines, but if any of those mindless machines are reading this then please, realise that I’m never going to approve your comments and give up.  The only good spam has dubious entertainment value.

Otherly, why have car manufacturers not caught on and put 12v cigarette lighter/charging sockets on the top part of the dashboard?  When I want to plug in my Garmin Nuvi I’m forced to have the cable trail down, round the instrument binnacle and to the socket near the gear-lever.  A second socket up on top of the dash would avoid all that.  Sort it out, guys!

I’m beginning to think there’s a Tablet PC fairy smiling down on me.  I previously posted that if you want my attention right now you’ll post about the touchscreen-enabled portables, and lo and behold people do.  The object of my lusts remains Lenovo’s X60t, despite the apparent lack of customisation options on their UK site, and so it’s good to see TabletPC2’s Review Tzar Linda Epstein award the MultiTouch version of it her coveted “Editors Choice”; Marc Orchant’s first-impressions are similarly stellar, and lest you think it’s only the pen-faithful who are enchanted along come I4U to say:

“Without any stretch of the imagination, the X60 could easily be a favourite of many large IT departments and tablet PC enthusiasts” I4U Review

No surprise, then, that I’ve already been on to Lenovo’s PR people and am on the waiting list for a review unit. 

The other piece of tabletty-goodness is that my good bud Ewdi (who got married yesterday - congratulations Mr Ewdi and Mrs Ewdi!) sent me over a Samsung Q1 UMPC to use while my tc1100 continues to suffer.  It’s the first time I’ve had my hands on one, and while passive touchscreens take some getting used to when you’re more familiar with active ones it’s nonetheless an awesome little gadget.  Having read Steve’s ultra-handy guide to setting up a streaming multi-room audio system I’ve now got another thing on my to-do list.  Perhaps I’ll couple that up with trying out Windows Home Server, since I got accepted onto the beta test for it.

Of course, no blog entry would be complete without my traditional hat-tip to Mike Cane, who I’m coming to consider as my spiritual creepy-cousin.  He’s been playing with a Q1 too, and I’m glad to hear that he’s suitably impressed.  Given Mike’s general attitude toward, well, life, that’s high praise indeed.

God bless America - I mean, where else could a guy dress up as a hooker and still make a decent career as a right-wing pundit?  I’m talking of course about the gas-filled apocalypse of good-taste that is Ann Coulter, still I would imagine gurgling with excitement after calling John Edwards a “faggot”

Poor Ann, everyone has jumped on the “club the homophobic, inappropriate bitch to death with her own Adam’s apple” bandwagon and missed her point entirely: is it possible that Americans are about to vote an offal-based meatball into office?

Coulter has obviously spent some time in the UK (possibly in the company of Bernard Manning), and thus understands that a faggot is:

“traditionally made from pig heart, liver and fatty belly meat or bacon minced together, with herbs added for flavouring and sometimes breadcrumbs. The mixture is shaped in the hand into balls, wrapped round with “caul” (a membrane from the pig’s abdomen), and baked” Thanks Wikipedia!

To be fair, if I was about to be governed by a chunk of pelvis-clad abattoir floor-scrapings then I’d want to know.  I’m not sure what the possible implications on foreign policy might be, but I can’t see American-Islam relations being done much good by having a Commander in Chief made from pork by-product.

Ladies, gentlemen, (and that curious middle ground occupied by Ann) we should be thanking Coulter not lambasting her.  Yes, the odorous sack of effluence is an embarrassment to taste, sanity and human-kind, but at least she knows her meat.