My favourite website of the day

This week, I am mostly laughing at Yale,Schmale.com, an obscure Ontario teaching college's attempt to pull in more students.

The president of their own Students' Union thinks the ad campaign is 'repugnant' and 'lacking in class'. I could say the same thing about Yale. For the record, I think that anyone who's too self-important and narrow-minded to see the humour has no business being on the campus of a higher education institute, at least not without a broom in their hand.

This will almost certainly get you laid

Guernsey has more internet users per capita than the United States, a fact that has helped me to have sex at more dinner parties than even knowing which bits of the planet are warming the fastest.

Interestingly, New Zealand seems to be the most wired nation on the planet, in spite their relatively limited broadband access. Perhaps this is because New Zealand is a nation of forward-thinking technocrats boldly embracing 21st century communication technologies? Frankly, it seems doubtful. I can only speculate that there's not much to do in the evenings after a hard day's sheep shearing and porcine terrorising except surf the web.

A Strapping Kiwi. Are you shearing that sheep? No, sod off and get your own.

We in the Developed World like to restrict our internet usage to the working day when the employer is paying for it, which probably skews the figures. At any point between 0900 and 1700 GMT, 67% of the entire British adult population is looking at YouTube.com, but they're doing it on company servers so it doesn't show up on the statistics*. Let's face it, the only reason to pay for Broadband in your own home is to allow you to download videos of Japanese women sticking eels up themselves without alerting the company firewall.

* This 'fact' is pure speculation, by the way. Don't try and use it to impress the blonde girl in accounts. Unless she's really stupid, of course, in which case all bets are on.

Urgent! Skunk neutralizing required - no time to explain!

The neighborhood skunk has taken a disliking to my friend's car. (Either that or a particular liking, I still haven't got used to the husbandry of these foreign mammals). Anyway, her ancient estate car has acquired a rather distinctive perfume. Normally this would have me bent double with laughter, but she's away on holiday and technically I'm responsible for this vehicle. She's also bigger than me and a faster runner.

I'm not too bothered about the smell, she'd get used to that eventually I'm sure, but the elk rutting season is almost upon us and I have no idea how a randy bull-elk will react to an extremely musky Subaru. It's unlikely to be a pretty sight though.

I should never have left London. Finsbury Park is not without it's nuisances, but at least the only musk I had to deal with was people on the Tube wearing too much Old Spice.

Some people never learn

But listen to the music, Marge! He's evil! (Homer Simpson)

My little mountain hideaway is more or less under siege at the moment, by a bunch of ridiculously earnest people in expensive suits and with improbable teeth. Ten years ago at Christmas a six-year-old girl was strangled to death. It was obviously a bit of a slow-news day that Christmas, no decent wars or anything, so a media circus descended on the town in a frenzy of speculation and hairspray. Boulder County Police Department are worthless sacks of shit at the best of times, and being Christmas they were clearly more interested in getting pissed and photocopying the Dispatcher's tits than making a decent fist of a murder investigation. Consequently, they just blamed the nearest suspects (the parents), and let the news companies get on with the trial. The police are big on efficiency here (i.e. idleness), and letting idiots like Geraldo try the case saves all that tedious messing around with judges, lawyers, courtrooms and evidence. Admittedly, the parents had some fairly odd views on parenting (calling your child JonBenet is a bit iffy, as is dressing up a six-year-old in Paris Hilton's party dress), so there was just enough material to insinuate all sorts of parental misdemeanors.

The things is, almost anybody competent who's investigated the whole affair has been persistently confident that the parents had nothing to do with it. You'd think that these so-called journalists would have learned their lesson and started indulging in a bit of good, old-fashioned fact checking and restraint. Apparently not. Some oddball has been picked up in Bangkok as a suspect, but before the D.A. has even charged the man (contrary what the LA Times thinks) his name's already being dragged through the mud. Tried, convicted and sentenced by a jury of 300 million gaping-mouthed cretins.

Back in the UK, it's illegal to name a suspect until you've actually charged them, just the sort of wishy-washy liberal attitude that apparently allows twelve-year-olds to wantonly board aeroplanes at will. A friend of mine was horrified to discover that some of the hundreds of terrorist suspects arrested in the UK this summer may actually have to released if no firm evidence is found against them, instead of packing them off to Guantanamo Bay where, I'm sure, a 'confession' could be acquired. (Mind you, he thinks Tony Blair is a communist for even tolerating the existence of a National Health Service, which is a delightful irony). He comes from a town called Normal, IL, which may or may not be significant.

Update!
Doh!

There's a time-bomb on my desk

Never mind liquid explosives on planes, I found out yesterday that my laptop is a potentially lethal incendiary device, just waiting to spread chaos and destruction. The arbitors of this diabolical plot are not, in fact, youths in Leeds but Dell, in league with their evil henchmen Sony. What annoys me most of all about this is the rudeness of these big organisations. When you get hold of a computer these days you have to spend hours filling out wretched registration forms and service agreements, all with contact details. Added to this, it's technically the University's computer, and I can assure you that they know full well which doors to kick in during the dead of night when my registration fee is a couple of hours late. Dell and A-Well-Known-West-Coast-Public-University between them could track me down faster than a Dept. of Homeland Security phone-tapper.

So why did I have to find out from the BBC? If you're going to supply someone with a potential firebomb then the least you can do is a brief email, warning them that they may lose their face while knocking up a quick spreadsheet. Even Al Qaeda has the common decency to inform their operatives that they should probably tell the wife not to plan anything special for that evening.

I had a stern chat with Dell last night. Laid it on the line, so to speak. I made it clear that it this laptop could burn down the office, blow my hands off or permanently disfigure me, but if the six months of research on my hard drive gets torched, then they'll have some fireballs of their very own to deal with.

It's looking at me now, you know, I daren't turn my back on it. It says it's on 'standby', but on standby for what I ask? The Luddites were right - these bastards are out to enslave us. iPods are just the vanguard.

Gibson

Tom McClintock, Republican candidate for California's lieutenant governor, has rejected Mel Gibson's fundraising support. Quite so, the Republican party has no business being associated with a Jew-hating, alcoholic religious fanatic.



I don't know why these Jewish organisations got so het up about Gibson anyway, it's not as if any sane human would choose to spend an evening sitting through The Passion of the Christ. Huge numbers of people went to see the English get fucked over in Braveheart and The Patriot, but you don't hear Tony Blair calling for the head of Mel Gibson. You should, but you don't.

Woman exhausted after long night on Scott's Knob

New Zealand woman Dawn Wood was said to be both exhausted and sore after a seven hour ordeal on Scott's Knob. She had to be carried off the Knob by a local Search and Rescue team, having broken her ankle ascending the 2160m peak.

I had a fairly traumatic weekend myself. I reached Climax with three 'close friends' on Friday night and on Saturday had dinner in Leadville, a town famed for (amongst other things) mutton busting. As you can imagine I'm a bit sore and exhausted myself, but at least I didn't have to rescued from Scott's Knob.

If I cared about such things, I'd be raging

Annabelle Bond, the climbing world's very own Paris Hilton, has apparently been awarded an O.B.E. for services to mountaineering, or servicing mountaineers, or some such nonsense. I've more or less tolerated her up until now, because I'm an overgrown adolescent and she's a bit of a looker who just invites condescension. My view of her is more or less characterised by Sir Jackie Stewart's comment - a fantastic achievement, never has such an attractive young lady achieved so much on such a precarious endeavor. Normally I'd consider that obscenely patronising male chauvinism, but for our Anna it just seems appropriate.

I've overlooked the the praise she gets for jetting around the world on her private income doing various guided tours up mountains. I've let her get away with claiming she's climbed the 7 highest mountains in the world. (She hasn't, she's climbed the highest peak in each of the seven continents - Kilimanjaro is one thing, K2 is quite another). I've even forgiven her shameless self-promotion, because she raises a stack of cash for cancer research. Oh, sure, if I looked like a cover girl and my Daddy was a bigwig at HSBC I'd be able to screw a few (tax deductable) quid out of the merchant banks, but let's not bite the hand that feeds.

An O.B.E. though? For bravely going where a only few thousand have gone before. Driven solely by her grit, determination, private income, contract with Vogue, a couple of mountain guides and a few hundred sherpas? For being so perfect that her mountaineering socks don't stink? If O.B.E. stood for 'Other Bugger's Efforts', then maybe.

Fortunately I don't have to get too angry that she gets one, and not some 70-year-old woman in Hulme who's taken in 50 odd foster kids over the years. An O.B.E. is a completely useless honour, about as meaningful as an 'exemplary military record' (which just means you never got too pissed in the mess and had a crack at the adjutant's wife). If I was Alan Hinkes (O.B.E.) though, I'd probably be asking for a free upgrade.

Adding to the nation's intellectual heritage

It's a well known fact in Europe that all Americans are morbidly obese religious fanatics with a sub-normal IQ. This is especially true of Florida. So it's good to see that British expats who move there are adding to the culture by being so indulgently stupid. Despite the fact that medical insurance is rarely out of the news here they appear surprised that they are expected to provide for their own healthcare. Similarly, despite the fact that they are essentially unskilled, they appear to be surprised that US immigration is not welcoming them with open arms. 'Come on in, you're just what we need, America doesn't have nearly enough people who can work in bars...'. I particularly enjoy the irony of British expats commenting on the insularity of American culture, whilst stocking up on those little 'essentials' like PG Tips teabags, McVities Chocolate Digestives and Marmite. (As an aside, if there's one thing that annoys me here it's the assumption that I drink tea. It's a pathetic brew, as insipid as the culture that has so lovingly embraced it.) A recent emigre to the US myself, I feel quite qualified to send the following message to those featured in this article.

You're all stupid cunts. You should be grateful that any country (including your own) will allow such intellectually needy cretins as yourselves into their borders, rather than driving you into the sea with pitchforks and flaming torches.

The article doesn't really address the question of why anybody would want to go to Florida in the first place. It's a dismal place, like Benidorm but with hurricanes instead of paella, whose only useful function is to act as the last earthly resting place for East Coast accountants and their widows.