Nixta Sinks

Oscar T. Rink

Not to mention that Tim & Norma are now grandparents, and of course that Jonky and Katy are the first of "the crew" (at least as I see it) to have kids. Well, one kid. Oscar. Oscar Thomas Rink. A fine specimine he is too, and already has James' hair.

Congratulations, J&K! Now Katy can drink for one again.

A doctor with oversized head
Who screamed if not hourly fed
Wed a spritely young writer
And huddled beside her
Now 14 months later they've bred

Bastard

[hic [sic]] I was going to write today about the wonders of this FF extension to allow your bookmarks to be synchronised between many machines and locations wherever Firefox is present, but this bastard beat me to it.

So, instead, I shall merely cut & paste an e-mail I received from the Everclever™ Dave shortly after I posted about Live Bookmarks (he would have written a comment, but apparently they were down at the time):

"Live Bookmarks are cool, but Bloglines is cooler. There is even a Firefox extension [here - Ed.] that makes the little orange status bar button subscribe using Bloglines instead of Live Bookmarks. Take a look at the blogs to which I subscribe here http://www.bloglines.com/public/dmooney ... they are almost wholly lacking in categorization with politics, technology, friends and (narcisistally) my own blogs all mishmoshed together. Take a peek-see."

I'm not sure that I like it yet, but Dave is normally right about these things in the end. It might be the answer to seeing all the latest stuff from around the place though to be honest I haven't gone into it too much. I'll take your feedback if any of you try it.

For those new to HTML and blogging, enrich your posts with fancy text (that won't show up on some client systems, but screw those losers)! Check out this (seemingly) comprehensive page. [ Here again is an invitation to tell me if you don't see a trademark logo up by the word "Everclever" just before Dave's quote ]

Briefly, for those that might be interested (particularly those to whom I still owe repayment of financial aid/soul/first born - you know who you are and I *will* find you, oh yes, if I have to track you down to Hades itself (sorry, I just watched Sling Blade for the first time, Mm Hm)), I start two jobs tomorrow. One a continuation of the work for ATOS Origin and DEFRA in London (for this admirable initiative), and one here in Bronxville for a real estate company that wants maps of properties on their web-pages and that wants to be able to find out where their agents are being the slackest to fire them with greater refinement.

Bronxville sounds scary to the uninitiated (me), but after disembarking the standard Metro North railroad piss-and-blood-stained railway carriage and wending my way along the narrow pedestrian ledge that passes for a sidewalk on the underpass, I was greeted by thatched cottages, enormously expensive automobiles and boutiques with dresses never under the price of a slightly less-than-enormously expensive automobile. My concerns about my paychecks melted on the warm chocolate scented breeze, and I picked up and pocketed a couple of unwanted solid gold kittens tarnishing themselves at Lady Godiva's Precious Kitten Pound before a homeless person took pity on me and handed me a $100 bill. Contrast this to Hempsted in Long Island which, despite being half way to The Hamptons, is manned by crazy knife-weiding toothless vagabonds. The INS has an office there, but so does the county court or some such shit. Eugh. I'm glad I went there before Bronxville.

I've got two words for you: Live Bookmarks.

Perhaps I should have heard about this sooner; it is on the front page of the Firefox website [you're fired - Ed.]. I'm sure everyone else knows about it already. Maybe I'm the only person on the planet to whom no-one ever tells anything (and coincidentally who can't read). But since I added an XML feed to Nixta Sinks thanks to the fine folks at Feedburner, I've discovered the reason for the orange icon at the bottom of the Firefox window (Microsoft stuff so much crap down there that I've long ago learnt to not notice anything in the status bar).

Splendid stuff. Still, I'm not sure how to make it list sites that have updated feeds since I last fired up the browser.

More on the cricket, I'm afraid (I wonder what this secret "plan" they have is - perhaps they'll stick their hand out then pull it back just in time and blow him a raspberry, or maybe they'll turn around and moon him, but no, we're not Australians - actually, I think the best retort would be to follow the lead of England's 1938 team in Berlin). There are just too many articles to post, but this one is reasonably recent and is of note because the author seems to have forgotten to remove his notes from the end of it. At the risk of falling into the Robert's favourite trap of cognitive dissonance (at least I think it would be covered by that particular umbrella), here's another one. In typical British media fashion it's teetering on the edge of hyperbole and outrageous parallels (UN vs ICC? Take it easy, Henry).

I have grown to love tabbed browsing in Firefox (thanks, Rob), but it still requires some attention. You cannot for example pop up a modal dialog (for those keen to learn about computer speak, that means one that takes and holds the focus from the application that displayed it, like when you press Pint in Microsoft Turd), and switch between tabs (so I have to write my blog in one Firefox window and have all my links ready as separate tabs in another). I can see exactly why it's that way from a programming perspective, but it's not a direct translation from the multi-window world to the tabbed world.

Anyway, for those of you that like tabbed browsing, are complete geek sucker losers, Microsoft Windows developers, and use Outlook Web Access, here's a trick for you. Open up Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (2002 or 2003 should work) and display the web toolbar. Then you can have loadsatabs. Furthermore, you can create multiple tab bars and partition your browsing space more flexibly: have columns or other splitarooneys, etc. etc.

Yes. It's lame. It's nerdy. It's geeky. It's actually quite shit. But it's tabbed browsing with Outlook Web Access.

Now it has come to pass in the past and lo! verily I have indeed said unto thee all that nay, I shall not comment politically on the happenings of the world, and shall keep myself entirely off that topic of politics, yea, which I find so painful and irritating to contemplate. But this is cricket we're talking about and some cockhead murdering hoojamaflip, and the retardedness of world cricketing bodies.

"The whole incident is regrettable but it has been resolved"

ECB chairman David Morgan

Is it not incredibly irresponsible of the ICC to threaten to fine a team that refuses to play a match/tour against a team that represents a country run by a deluded murderous tyrannical dictator? Of course the Zimbabwe cricket team doesn't share the aforementioned dictator's beliefs or murderousness, but would you as an England cricketer want to visit Zimbabwe in a high-profile international cricket tour? Keep politics and sport separate you say? Balls to you, I say! If Zimbabwe as a government are going to benefit from the tour (publicity, tourism (which you can bet will be taxed up the wazoo and carefully chaperoned), etc.), and so transparently no less as by insisting that any foreign journalist covering the tour must, having first been banned from travelling there at all, now sign a contract that they will not mention anything but cricket [so as to avoid any negative coverage] (they can't surely want to ban positive coverage), then the rout...er...tour must be cancelled.

I sound like a pro-democracy imperialist hound. I'm not suggesting fair elections. I'm not suggesting sanctions. That's for other slow-moving bureaucratic bodies to discuss and arrange. My point is that sport is an important publicity tool, and to ignore that as a governing body and force those who acknowledge it to compete under duress of moral discomfort is tantamount to rendering the competition pointless, and indeed, in combination with such gags as this week's journalist ban, in some ways to supporting the regime in proferring them publicity. There's no such thing as negative publicity? I'm not convinced. But when you're in charge of the publicity, you'd have to be pretty thick for there to be any.

In the past the ICC, priding itself on remaining blind to the political ramifications of a manipulative national sports council (run, it must be imagined, by Mugabe appointed cronies), has threatened to levy enormous fines on the ECB and team for dropping out of matches the safety of which were in grave doubt, not to mention the fact that many of the players had serious moral reservations about partaking of the competition. The argument that it's good for the people of Zimbabwe and for the betterment of cricket in the country is irrelevant.

I'm not suggesting any of the players are trying to engage in politics, but I *do* feel that ECB and ICC representatives are plainly stupid and, what's more, vastly underqualified to recognise and work with the real issues. I mostly feel those Zimbabweans suffering from Dr. Mugabe's government are being let down by the head-in-the-sand attitudes of the aforementioned governing bodies pretending that sport is not popular enough that it should carefully consider the PR ramifications.

When Zimbabwe banned all foreign journalists for the tour I breathed a sigh of relief as surely the tour must be cancelled and eyebrows must be raised in government. When they dropped the ban and replaced it with the cricket-only clause, I hoped the tour would have disbanded anyway, but dumb-fucks named David Morgan pushed it through and much to the surprise and dismay of many (including Jonathan Agnew, the England team), out they went.

"It is extraordinary," said BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew, one of the journalists who had been banned.

"Every single piece of information we had been receiving said there would be no way the Zimbabweans would change their mind.

"Everyone had got themselves into going home mode. I know for a fact the players were planning to go home for a few days."

I have no problem with Zimbabwe coming to England to play. Just don't shake the cock of a murderous halfwitted bigot.

Down at my favourite bar, the Musical Box (which doesn't get a plug because the proprietor does an excellent job of promoting it on his own - and I don't count it as a plug unless it's a hyperlink coz you can't e-drink yet, as far as I'm aware), I frequently bump into an fascinating character by the name of Jason Brody.

This relatively young (so I discovered the other day) fellow (which I had assumed from early on) has within his diminutive yet well-proportioned frame a great deal of creative talent. Not only is he a writer of some drive and quality, and a copy-editor to make ends meet (for example, he's really turned on by this stuff), but he is a talented musician. Earlier this year he released his first solo album and has been playing gigs in support of it since (some of them even attended by audiences). He's now about to begin work on his next album (known to many as his second album) which he's looking forward to on the grounds that he's got a band to play some of the instruments now and might be able to sleep for a few hours each week. Not that he does sleep much, apparently. His standard entrance to the bar is marked by a yawn atop of which are perched two desparate darkened eyes that don't look altogether comfortable in such close proximity to one-another. Honestly, he mostly looks like he's just about to contemplate himself to death and I use this as an opportunity to see whether I can in some way accelerate his demise. I am proud to include in my armoury such diverse waepons as anti-semitism, dwarf jokes, observations on his shoddy guitar-playing and jibes at his femininity.

I'm also picking his brains on his real passion: With his master's degree, he has fascinating insight into the schooling of creative writing (I've always been a scientist in mentality, if only a dropout in achievement). The poor chap must be exhausted by my incessant and moronic questioning. I hope to herd him back to writing though (which transition he professes an understandable fear of), so I see it as an altruistic effort on my part, for which I expect to be rewarded suitably by those that be in power and all that up above like sort of thing. Innit? See, with my grasp of the word things, the novel is just waiting for an idea and its gonna write itself!

In other news, Renos finds himself the target of my remaining nagging in an effort to get him to paint again as he once used to. Slowly, and with great Brandy. He recently managed to get himself thrown out of the final 10 of Channel 5's Big Art Challenge on the principle that he wouldn't talk about his painting with no fucking crickets [sic] and who did they think they were to give him prizes, those paedophile perverts! Translated into English: What kind of critics were they if they had to ask the artist to describe the painting? Good point really and finely made (for those of you lucky enough to catch the episode), though there's some "artistic flair" in his delivery of course, which probably didn't help his way to the £10,000 grand prize.

This lovely apartment complex in which I live was completed shortly after World War II. There are apparently about 11,000 apartments here, and the whole place covers some 21+ Manhattan blocks. It's a nice, isolated place recently taken over by a large bastard corporation whose business it is to negotiate money out of people's pockets in the name of investing it in exchange for knowing that when your spouse dies suddenly, you'll have enough money to bury them and throw one hell of a party (that link smacks of excellent parenting, btw). Unlike shoddy private Denver/Queens/L.E.S landlords who bicker and squabble about every little piece of chipped lead paint in your dinner and running water down your walls, these people fix problems with the greatest of speed and professionalism. It's quite a treat.

When we moved into this apartment from one around the corner in the same complex, we found that the communal garbage chute door was a little loose-fitting (beaten up). During hot spells the 9th floor hallways smelt very slightly of rotting cabbage, but I didn't know how much of that might be caused by being on the 9th floor vs the ground floor and how much was on account of the loose-fitting door or whether it was all down to the peculiar cooking habits of others. The door itself had a home-made label on it with the words

"Please push the door closed to minimize the smell. Thanks. Your 9th floor neighbours"

so I assumed that my "9th floor neighbours" had asked to have it fixed and for some reason it wasn't possible to repair. I don't have much experience repairing garbage chutes (it's not something my father typically had a need to design into his buildings), so I assumed there was some good reason I was being subjected to the malodour whilst waiting for the lift. Then there's the struggle to open and close the chute door when depositing rubbish. It seems that at some point someone spent some time battling the inside of the mechanism with a crowbar as it was entirely bent out of shape, and not outwards either. All in all, very odd.

Last week, after years of battering and bending, slamming and tugging, the poor handle on the chute finally lost its last screw. Some enterprising 9th floor neighbour attached a wire hanger to the door to use as a handle. It didn't work. It was the last straw and I called the landlords who apologised profusely. I explained that there probably was a call in already from the wire hanger DIY specialist, but there was none. I wondered why.

The next morning there was rattling, radio, and whistling in the hallway, and 45 minutes later we had a brand new firmly closing smoothly hinged clean garbage chute door. For a full year, I had been grappling with filth and muck and poisonous odours, slamming and bending a 50 year old door, swearing as rubbish had to be pushed by hand past the crooked and stained inner crowbarred walls of the door, purely because my 9th floor retarded fuckwad tosser "neighbours" had never fucking called resident services (well, and because I was stupid enough to place faith in people I'd never met).

Why did they not call? Are they 3 years old? Have they all, to a man, murdered the real tenants and are living there illegally? Do they all have pets in their apartments? I know that the bastard the other side of our thin internal walls is a bookie. That's illegal over here, and I have to listen to him screaming all day at bad debtors. He's short and Brooklyn through and through. He looks like some reject off the Sopranos and seems to be hard of hearing or mildly retarded (otherwise he'd better have quite an excuse for talking so loudly in the hallway). And to top it all off he seems to act as babysitter in the evenings for the numerous violent children on this floor. He does this with a glee and fervour suitable only for a certified child molester. Still, contrasting the devilish screaming of the children in both the hallway and in their own homes with the whoops of glee as they cavort around Joey's Buttafuckwit's apartment next door, they must be infinitely happier in his care than elsewhere.

Their parents though... their parents must have grown up on a diet of lead to be posting instructions on and tying wire hangers to long-decrepit garbage chute doors when a free phone call could have it fixed (remember, you Brits, free local calls in this country), though it does indeed seem that many of them leave home in the morning to wait for the tiny bus to Stupid Town. What a fucking motley crew of half-breeds I have to count as my neighbours.

You'll be glad to read that the new door facilitated an efficient and non-revolting disposal of the cast-offs of Dani's excellent Thanksgiving cooking enterprise. Wire hangers. Gah!

Piaf	Toast

As Rob pointed out, the most expensive sandwich ever has just been sold for a measly $28,000 - a low price to pay for a slice of Heaven, I would have thought. But I'm not convinced. I'm a Godfearing person, though most people would argue otherwise (though honestly, who the fuck wouldn't be afraid of someone omnipresent and omniscient? I mean, if I wasn't, he'd know and that's frankly scary). So anyway (grammar to the wind), as I was saying, it's like this: This is an Edith Piaf sandwich. No more. No less. And it's certainly not a cheap Japanese imitation (now up to $53!), I mean the parody doesn't even have a bite out of it, for Christ's sake. It could easily be a Marlene Dietrich toastie too - the resolution of toast leaves something to be desired - but I'm leaning more to the Piafster.

Notice how you've never seen them both in the same room at the same time? Interesting that... Now that you mention it...

Just as soon as I revive my flagging career as a flag-waving nincompoop of the internet, the cheese-eating gun-toting of Dr. Bobski Del Foire declares itself demised.

I've seen it all before, it has to be said, and I hope that Crying Shame returns from the dead as HotItHappened did before it.

Now if we can just persuade The Sherman Foundation (whose apathy puts mine to shame) to resume hostilities, my empire will be complete.

So where have I been all this time, and what's with my quietude on this page when blogging has become so popular and frequent that indeed black is the new blog?

I've been here, actually. Mostly cooped up in this apartment. I've been preparing for a new project that I'll be working on out here, essentially starting up a company with one other chap, though really he's pretty much done all the work of setting it up and I've just given my tuppence when it comes to the technology to be used.

But that's not an excuse for not updating here. I would have claimed that I didn't feel the urge to write. But that's not really true. Perhaps I could claim that I've been busy, but that's not true either. That said, I did spend some time migrating everything off my old rusty noisy server onto my new swanky P4 3Ghz system and have finally worked out how to get Dani's Mac OS X Powerbook to work with my new Windows 2003 server thanks to this excellent tip - my apartment is now so much quieter... No, I suppose I've merely fallen into a state of apathy for a few days (as is my wont) but it's time I dragged myself out of that and back into the real world.

So here it is. The return of regular blog posts.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said: "I have no earthly idea how it got in there. Nobody is going to defend this."

I can no longer tell the difference between made-up news and real news.

Yes, I was merely desperate to post *something*. Anything.

This just in. Younger brother successfully breaks in to studio for Slovenian franchised TV show. Or is it an evil lair of some description? Whatever it is, it seems to be ready for a move somewhere, or hasn't quite been unpacked yet.

The logo translates as "It's nice being a MILLIONAIRE". Sadly, Slovenia is still using the Tolar which, at 341.552 SIT to the pound is perhaps enough for two or three months' rent here in New York (assuming the dollar doesn't go the way of Nixta.com).

In other news, Rob Fiorentino keeps his blog under wraps. Perhaps until such time as he feels he has enough material to fill a browser page. Until he sets up a decent commenting system though, Saddam's lookalikes are integrating themselves into society, that's what's happened to them (now that there's no more point in bringing them down from the inside). They had a hard-enough time of it before, so get off their backs, Katomica (although this one needs a kicking).

Woe #1: Migrating my e-mail proved technically simple to achieve, but nightmarishly hard to persuade myself of success because GMail and Hotmail were both playing up yesterday. I still seem to get e-mails with varying delay, but all my tests that I personally send arrive immediately. Grrrrr.

Woe #2: Blogger.com decides to prevent me from venting my pulsating spleen. With only the most criptic of error messages ("Our technical staff have been informed") I am allowed for 30 minutes only to post to How It Happened (which, Dr. R. will be happy to know, I refrained from doing).

Woe #3: Hotmail have now, in synchronization with upping my limits to 250Mb (though only on all accounts I have opened in the last 2 years, not on my age-old workhorse of nixta1), blocked access via Outlook or Outlook Express for non-paying subscribers! Although I'm a capitalist pig at heart, this riles me no end. Hotmail, which I've subscribed to since before MS got their paws on it (but not quite as long as nixta@hotmail.com has, apprently!), should not be restricted this way! Gah! Wah! Pah! How will I keep nixtaman, nicholasfurness, nobbycathcart, and winkywankywoozleberry active without Outlook to "touch" them from time to time? See bottom of this page.

Woe #4: In advance. Slashdot will no doubt not post my notification of this change. They never post anything I send them, the cliquey sodomites (well, some of them are sodomites). [And yes, it was rejected - I suppose blasting MS is no longer good enough, you have to have SCO and Linux in there somewhere for it to count... It's like those moving goalposts the US wanted for their World Cup thingamajig].

"The point is that there is no point, we do it for fun, we do it because we can."

Tossers. No, wait. Twats.

I'm not writing this article because there's any point. I'm writing it for fun. I'm writing it because I can. And because these clowns deserve ridicule. Can you imagine it? 30 people all dancing to different tunes at the same time, and you can't hear any of them? That's the sort of bollocks you'd expect to win a Turner prize these days.

Now, if you could watch the morons dancing, and tune in to each one's headphones in turn, it might make interesting viewing. For 10 minutes. If you could then send 10'000 volts through their headphones if you so chose to, that would make *really* interesting viewing.

If I, as an 8-year old, can realise that I don't have icicles hanging from my nose on the way to school, but rather snotcicles, why can't a (presumably fully-grown) CNN writer/editor combo prevent the following from appearing on their good-for-nothing (except a quick view of the DOW) website?

There was less biological decay than Ballard expected although much of the ship was covered in icicles of rust.

Idiots. Fucking idiots.

In the frankly shocking sacking of dear Boris Johnson from his position in the Soft-cock Party, I stumbled across this photo of Katie Newall of Liverpool reading a copy of the Spectator in which Boris apparently had the gall to deride poor Liverpudlians as (I quote the BBC here, since I don't have access to the Spectator's subscription bit, but I don't quite trust the beeb's online editing) "wallowing in victimhood".

I was recently (as a native tourist) introduced to Little Britain, and I couldn't help but notice a prime candidate for Lookalikes (keep refreshing for random ones). Incidentally, the two scouse JPEGs linked to above are also prime candidates, but that would be going too far; let's have a heart, and spare a thought for those suffering scousers.

Next week: WWW (What's Wrong With) Newcastle.

Editorial note:
I can no longer bring myself to use the phrase "come across" ever since Glenn Goodrich responded during a game of Pictionary with "women's faces?" to the clue (and no, you're not really supposed to speak, but we were drunk and Dana was frankly sucking at her turn to draw) "it's something you come across". Hence my choice of "stumble across" even though I wasn't really stumbling at the time.

Holy crap WTF moment:
What the hell is Dana Sisti doing being quoted in a (syndicated) article about John Stewart? And why the fuck can't I get away from the bastard? You'd think there was nothing else worth talking about in this country.

I know a man who believes and preaches that it's perfectly acceptable to bite your pet dog to teach it a lesson (particularly if it bites you first). I, and many others, thought he was alone in this world. We were apparently wrong.

Thank God he doesn't have kids.

During a nice warm bath just now (though most of that is a lie since the bath was not nice, it being far too short for me and in the style of most American baths far too shallow to boot so that perhaps at most 20% of me was at any time submerged, which makes for a not very warm bath at all) I realised why it is that I do not post entries here with anything remotely approaching fervour. And the reason is this: I'm trying to write a blog like Rufus or Giles do. Well, that's just bullshit. They do that very well. I do not. *I* go to *their* blogs for my entertainment of a day. I certainly can't hope to write something similar.

No, my patented blog entry is an uneducated rant on some subject that has irked me of late, and Lord knows that there are many things that piss me off. I think that instead of a heart (or perhaps liver) I may have some other organ that instantly raises the temperature of the blood to whatever temperature blood boils at (probably pretty close to 100 degrees C). I'm pissed off by the shoddy editing of BBC News. I'm pissed off at half the people I had to share office space with at ATOS all this year. I'm pissed off at the bastard in The Zebra who made some snide remark about Edgar J Hoover during a quiz there once. I'm also pissed off now that I fell into the trap of trying to direct my creativity in completely the wrong direction because I saw others doing it so well. I'll leave that to them. This page will revert to mostly Collin-Pillinger-bashing, Yank-Patronising, and Frenchy-slagging.

Up Yours, Delors!

So, I finally jumped from a sinking ship to a passing bandwagon (draw a picture of that and you get a prize). Well, OK, it might not be sinking yet, but just as I predicted the rise of IE back in 1997, so I hereby predict its demise. A complete rewrite would be required to perform as well as Firefox does and although I have some issues with Firefox (can't browse Outlook Web Access nicely etc.), I'm sure their community will have them fixed in no time.

And I humbly concede defeat to Rob. Tabbed browsing rules, if only because of this tool though. But it would still be shit if it didn't load all those lovely little favicons.

I was asked if this blog is dead. Yes. Yes, this blog is dead. I'm so bored with it already, and I don't even have a job. Oh, all right, it isn't, but I've been too busy playing this (thanks Rufus) to get anything else done. Yes, I'm too dumb to play Halo or Halo 2, and I don't have a Playstation. I'm even too lazy and hungover to paste any more links.

UPDATE
Since I posted that, I've looked into Linky a bit more, and it's excellent. Greg asked about it a bit, but I've decided to post my thoughts here rather than the comments section because it might be of interest to many.

This screenshot shows it in action. It pops up a dialog listing the links about to be opened which irritated the hell out of me until I figured out that you can configure just about everything Linky via Firefox's Extension manager. Linky rocks!

Funny where you find things (in response to this, in response to this).

I read the response to the question increasingly wide-eyed (until they started to hurt). Oh, I can't be arsed to write any more. I'm already sorry I've posted this and I haven't posted it yet.

That'll teach me to see how low a grade Team America got on IMDB. In total, a quite incredibly high 7.4.

Trillian 3.0 alpha is pretty good, and seemingly more stable than the 2.0 release, but I still won't buy from those money-grabbing bastards. In essence they refuse to divulge compatibility with systems pre-purchase (members only forums) and there are no refunds whatsoever (scroll down). Plus it's a heavyweight dog that Microsoft would have been proud of 5 years ago.

Firefox 1.0 on the other hand is pretty shit, largely because all its websites are overloaded from downloaders no doubt, so installing a Macromedia Flash player just doesn't work. I'm sure that when it's all back up to speed it'll be a pleasure, but for right now they know where they can shove it.

Bruce Chatwin, take note. Navigating around New York (via Chrissy at Circa Now) might just have become an armchair passtime, and a rather interesting one at that. It took me a while to figure out how it worked, but I'm more than a little dumb.

Reminds me very slightly of London's Streetsensation.com, useful for spotting where you might have seen Lucille's recommended passport photo place in Tottenham Court Road whilst stumbling home drunk the other night. Impressively, they're updated already with the new Tesco.

On the subject of maps, since I'm supposed to know about such things, Multimap surprised me greatly not very long ago with this very simple, but quite ingenious map overlay. Move the mouse over the map of Marylebone(ish) to see what I mean.

UPDATE: I might not post here for a few days because I'm going to read NYSonglines.com. Even Tompkins Square Park has plenty of gruesome and oddball (East Village) history.

This rather splendid store (via)must have been featured many times before. In fact, I sort of suspect that Dr. Rufus has a bag made by them, but if not then he has one made by someone who does exactly the same thing.

It's a slow day. Partly because I think all those people are thumping up and down the city, jogging the internet somehow. I swear that half the bits and bytes I'm requesting are being dropped somewhere, no-doubt under 5th Avenue up by the park right now.

Despite still being sick as a dog, I'm going to get out and about today because it's a lovely day, pretty birds etc. etc., and because the illegal bookie next door has started screaming physical abuse threats down his phone again (and I live in a nice apartment complex). Oh. Now the disturbed children have come into the hallway to cry. I'm taking a red nose with me in case I happen across any rappers (thanks, Dr. R.). What amuses me about that is that the implication is that Fuddy Duddy is afraid of rappers. Is there a name for that particular phobia?

This is so sad, you may actually cry. I even tried to get the free iPod thing, and to help Shiv get his, but people bailed on him and then they dropped the Rhapsody subscription (though I use Listen.com)as a qualifying factor, so he didn't get his. I didn't need mine because I'd already got one, now ensconced in its peachy gay luminous case.

And then the bastard follows up with this! I think his blog should be renamed Pathosmusings.

I should add that I was drawn to this blog thanks to Dr. Fiorentino and this comment. I misread the URL as PORNOmusings; in the sans-serif font I use, the juxtaposition of a lower case 'r' and 'n' is almost indistinguishable from an 'm'.

When you're sick with the flu, you have the zacklies (though I'd argue it should be "zactlies")and you're stuck at home unemployed, it's pretty hard to motivate yourself to write anything at all.

I have a response to the Queens AA587 Airbus crash yet to post, with insightful and patient input from the esteemed David Learmount, but that too sounds too much like news and political bollocks, and I can't be arsed to write it.

Interesting stuff at Fark, but it's so well presented you can just look yourself.

My gay iSkin iPod case is gayer than even I had imagined. Not that I have a problem with my sexuality, but really, it looked an enticing bright orange but instead it's a poofter peach. All in all I feel rather hard done by.

And added to that are intensely irritating graphics card problems. Symptoms are the same, but the solution don't work. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd really appreciate them coz I can't watch 'alf me bleedin' mooveez.

Certainly the mood here in New York is gloomy. Wednesday night was the quietest night I recall. I thought the windows were shut. Oh well, tra-la-laaaa!

UPDATE: After uninstalling the K-Lite codec pack and all my video drivers and utilities, I installed afresh with video drivers and K-Lite (this time with default recommended settings) and now everything works swimmingly (including videos I made with Rob's excellent Panasonic wossname), with the mild exception that my TV as a secondary overlay display is garbled when there's no video playing, but that's fine coz I ain't using it as a desktop... Ooooh no, missy!

Some light humour for you all. You know how the BBC News has a scrolling headline at the top for breaking news that goes between 5 or 6 top articles, occasionally linking to them if they've had time to write something? Well, right now, it seems to be stuck on one:

LATEST: George Bush says every American has stake in ongoing war on terror.

Over and over again and over and over and over and over again and over and over and over and over again and over and over and over and over again and over and over and over and over again and over and over and over and over again and over and over and over and over again and over and over and over... right over a headline about whether old 'AveAHat is dead. It's like I've gone to bed and am dreaming.

Speaking of, those of you that have not yet experienced R. Polanski's terrifying The Tenant, get on it. Now that's how to film a nightmare sequence. Who cares if he drugs and shags young girls then skips bail? Er...

[Phew - The beeb is already fixed. One get nervous in New York, you know]

November 2nd, 2004: Operation Shock and Awe comes home. I know I promised not to dwell on the issue of it, but screw you. Also, this may be of passing interest to those that don't live in the red bit of the US.

I had a long IM chat with a chum of mine who shall remain nameless and who will kick my ass for posting this, but it scared me. No doubt he'll tell you it scared me because I'm a lilly-livered liberal poof and a nancy-boy. Really, it scares me because of the following:

• He's more than slightly intelligent (certainly brighter than me)
• It reminds me why I wanted to leave the Mid-West
• He worked abroad for a while
• He's a lovely kindly father and a good man
• He's not ill-educated in the least

The conversation turned to politics accidentally when I failed on a general knowledge test of US College retardedness and I asked him why I should know about that when I can't even vote. Jokingly he told me to go home if I wanted to vote, which was fair enough, then apologised for his outburt with the following terrifying statement:

Sorry, I waited in line for 2 1/2 hours to vote yesterday, and was pissed off as hell about it. Makes it all worth it today, though:
1) Four more years of Dubya
2) All 11 states shot down the same sex marriage proposals
3) Republicans picked up 2 more seats in the Senate
4) I don't have to listen to Kerry/Edwards crap any more.

I don't care about 3 and 4 (though what about the Bush/Cheney crap?), but my jaw dropped at 1 and I felt that 2 had fuck all to do with it before it struck me that at heart, this *is* an American election and as such should be dealt with by Americans for Americans. But still, what does 2 have to do with it, specifically? The Greeks built the civilized world based on buggery.

"Dubya" is an insult where I come from! And to actually *want* 4 more years? Had I passed out, Dorothy style? It was all I could do to cling on the the desk and remain upright until the blood started moving around again. With fresh oxygen to the brain came the realisation that to much of the country my blinkered New York immigrant point of view wasn't even a consideration.

My ill-judged diplomatic response that North Carolina was comfortably enough Republican that he could have skipped the 2 1/2 hours and lay in bed was greeted with

People died giving me the right to vote. I'm gonna use it.

Now, ladies and gents, my knowledge of (US) history is sadly lacking, but my immediate question was did the people who so nobly gave up their lives in wars of independence and various internal struggles have in mind the convoluted and flawed electoral college system? Maybe the people sending them to their deaths did, but that's a bit cynical of me. I didn't voice that question though, nor the concern that 3% popular vote does not a democratic majority make, and after I recouperated over a digression about the UK political structure and Peers and the Queen we got to this:

Him: So, where do you stand on the Dubya issue?
Me: I'm not a fan really.
Me: I can see why people in the US voted for him [ Kerry is no genius himself ], but people outside the US are genuinely afraid of him.
Me: I don't believe that Kerry would have been much better, but he would have been a good thing for the US as far as foreign opinion goes.
Me: Of course, it's not foreigners voting, but the US's fingers do extend to some far away pies, and in some ways it is very important.
Him: Sure, the leader of the free world is VERY important.
Him: However, I think the first priority of the US President is to protect the US citizens, and 8 years of Clinton trashed that.

Well, it just went round and round from there. Terrorists, Nuclear Threats, US could only defend itself on 2 fronts after Clinton whittled down the Army etc. etc. ("free world" and "leader" got my goat too, but that's just media spin gone awry, I hope). No talk of whether a strengthened army in the hands of a baby in a suit (he preferse "Commander In Chief", having risen through the ranks of course) was a wise thing, least of all when America + Rummy + Guantanamo = Judge Dredd. And no talk of short-sighted economic policies leaving the country crippled for decades when Bush-babe is gone, but who cares about that now that all of Russia's money is in English football?

I'll digress briefly (if you've even got this far): I see politics well illustrated with this point: In Colorado where one experiences severe heat and cold alternately, potholes in the roads are a severe problem. No-one is willing to invest in repaving the roads with better engineers using better quality materials that might require repairing only very seldom because it's cheaper to use everyday crap and leave it to the next administration to repair it again a bit later. The costs incurred by the government are constant small roadworks. The populace loses untold time in traffic jams and spends big $$$ repairing punctured tyres, broken suspension, and violently removed exhaust pipes. Not the current administrations problem though, innit?

Back to the point: John Stewart's team took a quick survey in a suburban mid-west diner last weekish whereat one poor sap reported that "I'm much better off now than I was 4 years ago". Therein lies the problem. So am I (no thanks to Dubya) though my underpant cleaning bills are through the roof whenever I watch foreign news, but why should this chap do that? I was grateful for my $300 tax rebate. It... er... did fuck all to wipe out my debt, but what did it mean to him? Is the country full of low-paid blue-collar labour? Possibly related: How about you don't penalise me with taxes for being married? On that note, you should allow (nay, force) gay marriages; there's a whole new market for taxing at a higher rate that you're missing out on right now, and you won't even have to give them tax breaks for having kids! Genius! [But now I've fallen foul of the Liberals' subjective bullshit argument - I haven't actually said "White Trash", but I'm starting to mean it - maybe there should be two countries after all].

Dubya's realistic challenge in this administration is to find it within himself to set another Republican party candidate up for president (since two terms are Gee Dubya's limit). It's a long-term plan. It's a selfless plan. I'm not sure he's got the nouse, but it's the only challenge he might have a chance at.

If you've read this far, please write to me and I'll send you a prize. It may be in the form of a picture of a dog or something, but you'll get a prize. Once more I apologise, but I can't afford a shrink and I get worried when I lie on the couch all day and talk to myself. It'll all work out in the end.

And how. Oh... Meh. What a voice those tornado/bible/oversize belt states have. So loud and sonorous that anything else is drowned out without even a chance.

The desperate last hope for the Democrats lay in Ohio's provisional votes which, no matter how you looked at it, didn't really bode well. And here is where different political biases come out most strongly in the refreshingly restrained media reporting of the election. Kerry's campaign claimed 250K such votes remaining, though that's even by their admission the highest estimate. The BBC goes for a different set of figures. The Times for yet another, leaving him with 97% of them required for victory compared to 70% for the Kerry side of things (and I was surprised the Economist plumped for those figures so readily, but then they're not really a live-feed type of publication...).

Nice to see that the insomniacs of Great Britain followed the election also. Giles has a nice little comparison on the two candidates and rightly concludes that neither is particularly capable or desirable, while his comments yield a fear-inspiring concise synopsis of out next four years.

And for the gamblers amongst you, see how you spent your money on Kerry.

The map looks nice though. For years people have been wanting to oust Texas from the union, not least the Texans themselves. Perhaps we can just take the West Coast and North-East and create a new country out of them. That'd be nice.

IM Monikers of the day:

• KatieO - Deport me


• Barrett is considering emigrating


• Alfie Noakes - Jumping into the Hudson


• ...Tonks... Bible 1 Brains 0 [though he chickened out]


• DR-Davis in "born-again Christian land"

IM Conversations of the day:

nixtahome: wotudoin?
Crocodile Clown: working, crying
nixtahome: Shall we emigrate?
nixtahome: To Cyprus?
Crocodile Clown: sure

Alfie Noakes - Jumping into the Hudson says: They should make two countries.
..Tonks.. ugh says: ha
..Tonks.. ugh says: yes
..Tonks.. ugh says: one which has both coasts, and one in the middle
..Tonks... says: The Brain... I mean Bible - between two ears

I apologise for the posts, but it's been an interesting 48 hours over here. Visit Dr. Rufus for some light entertainment, but note right now that even he admits it's been a slow day on the internet.

Go to sleep on it for a bit and the experts come out right on top. Unbelievable. Neck and neck, just as they said, and I thought it looked like something of a landslide. The maps still look pretty red though...

Thank goodness for experts.

I'm glad that there are experts out there, because some of them think that this thing is still close. Looking at it as it happens (that is to say, live), and remember that I'm someone who's never really paid attention to it before, it seems like that great turd, George DubbleYar Bushlinger III, is well on his way back, which I must say I didn't expect.

Good work by Dave (who tried in vain to get me to be driven out there on Monday to help make maps or canvas or hand out badges or something) to make sure that Pennsylvania was a walk-over. I would have made things a lot more even keeled, Dave. I'm incompetent like that.

Perhaps in the morning someone will know something, but it seems unlikely.

I say! This *is* fun! I've never paid much attention to politics before (and doesn't it just show), largely because it's a load of shit (and doesn't it just show). This is better than The Apprentice though. At the close of Comedy Central's live coverage a collective boo/sigh went up in the audience as the figures of Bush: 196, Kerry: 112 were announced. Shortly afterwards, Kerry had 188. It's 247ish to 211ish right now. Goodnight.

Aside from an American passport, to be a real American, one needs one of these (a doctor told me this, and doctors don't lie). I won't go into what else you need.

It'll be another 3 years before I can get a US passport to add to my British and Slovenian ones. For those that have not seen a Slovenian passport, it's truly something to behold. Each page contains a different picture overlaid on contours. The photo is doctored to make you look like Bela Lugosi and when you flick the pages a little horse and rider are animated down the edge.

Dr. Rufus asked the other day whether the US Green Card was really green. It's a question that I vaguely recall having myself years ago before the INS and BCIS and USCIS crushed my enthusiasm for the whole thing.

The back is significantly more green than the front and it's nice and shiny, which doesn't come across too well in the scans. Amazingly, it took less than 10 days to arrive after I had my fingerprints and photo taken. Good old Hempstead office (which had appointments less than 10 days away - the New York office had no appointments for 2 months).