Loud Farts

The wife and I were watching something on the box and there was something about debt collecting. One thing leads to another; I make a joke about exciting new ways to collect debts and she says, "I've always wanted to send a letter to people who owe us money, with me holding a gun to a puppy's head with the message saying. 'Pay up or the puppy gets it!'"

Searching Google, this was the best I could come up with:

***

I haven't told the wife this, yet, but I phoned the dole office today to see about signing on and getting my stamp paid or whatever the modern equivalent is. I'm entitled to income based JSA, which is a benefit not a superhero team and I will be eligible for it when my redundancy money is deemed spent. I didn't find this from the dole office because trying to talk to an operative there is like trying to contact Facebook. Nigh on impossible. What I had to do was ring up and give a number for them to contact me. It was all automated, there was no one for me to ask any questions. It was frustrating. They haven't called back.

***

The car goes in for a service tomorrow; it's going to cost in excess of £200. One of the pitfalls of buying a new car; what you don't pay in MOT charges, you do in service. It's come at a bad time, what with my former employer's slightly screwing up my salary and waiting almost a 5 weeks before they pay me my redundancy. Some of my friends have suggested that I should have got everything I'm owed when I left; that hasn't been the case; not by a long chalk.

My salary slip showed one amount. The sum paid into my account was another. My mileage hasn't been paid and I had had no indication of when I'd get my severance pay until I went to the boss. He couldn't tell me, but thinks it'll be the end of June.

We're not well off by any stretch and this has meant that we're decidedly poor at a time when my income has dropped £22,000 a year!

No wonder I'm really optimistic and enthusiastic about the coming weeks...

That was sarcasm, in case you needed to be told.

***

I know most of the people who read this tend to skip over my rants about football, which is why I always signpost them. But considering we gave the world the game, we certainly get treated by the governing body like a syphilis epidemic in a girls' school.

I'm inclined to suggest that as we don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of ever winning the World Cup, let alone hosting it again; the FA and the Premier League should boycott FIFA. Tell them to shove their organisation.

Apologies for the language, but Sepp Blatter really is a cunt.

***

Radio 6. Not terribly impressed. Started listening to it at the start of the week and have persevered. Not totally sure what the remit is especially when they play Love is in the Air by John Paul Young, but I have heard some things this week that I've enjoyed. Several Led Zeppelin tracks; a new song by the Horrors, who I don't know, but this sounds like The Damned meet Pre-Hillage Simple Minds and a track that the Jo woman who is doing the afternoon show at the moment has played. Both times she's neglected to tell me (or anyone else) who it's by.

I love that on a radio show.

That was sarcasm, in case you needed to be told.

Light Grey Battle Troopers

The Royal Horticultural Society treat the Chelsea Flower Show and major events of its ilk like sport. Awarding gold, silver and bronze medals and it all being about the Competition. I'd never really thought about gardening as a sport until this morning when parts of my body I wasn't aware existed were screaming at me like I'd just done a marathon.

Two hours. Just two hours I was in the garden yesterday; planting beetroots, sunflowers and lawn mowing. I need to get in better shape; I'm a physical disaster...

***

FIFA could stand for Farcical International Football Association or Football International Fucking Amateurs or even something very rude. If a country were run the way FIFA is then we'd be bombing its forces and demanding Sepp Blatter stand in a World Court. Or at least that's what a handful of people think. It would appear that 172 FIFA member countries think differently...

Mindboggling.

***

Summer's back, just after a Bank Holiday weekend - mother nature has a wicked sense of humour!

***

Funniest name I've seen this week: Jacob Lobschitz.

***

Had a nice email from Rich Johnston this week saying how much he was enjoying My Monthly Curse. "Surprised a lot of people by not being a weekly 'That Dez Skinn? What a cunt'. Instead it's a considered, thoughtful analysis."

I have one word: August.

Alternatively, he could be saying: Phill, this is all well and good, but it's as boring as hell, when are you going to dish the dirt on Dez?

The thing is, for those of you who read this and give a shit, the story that I'm telling involves him; there is a bit of biography about him and a lot of what my life was like working for him. If anyone is expecting me reveal where the bodies are buried or how many offshore bank accounts he has, then they might as well stop now.

Circumspect Bastard

I'm not having the best of long weekends.

On Saturday, I twisted my ankle. Today it is swollen and painful and doesn't like me walking on it.

Last night, while turning over in bed, I managed to pull a muscle in my back, which hurts like billy-oh when I breath. Good job I have my work chair in my own office now; it allows me some comfort and support. However, not one of my vast array of painkillers has been able to touch it. I have been in a lot of discomfort now for all of my waking hours. My ankle doesn't hurt, so they're working on something!

Things come in threes and I'm thinking perhaps I should go and hide myself away, out of harm's way.

***

I'm being highly critical of my serialised book. I'm really happy that people are reading it; happier still that it's allowed me to touch base with some of the people I liked from my past; but I'm expecting to spend a large part of today - Sunday - re-editing part of it and rejigging the duration.

Since it's been serialised, I have been going into the scheduled post a few days before it gets published and I've been editing it, again. Just having a read through and generally tidying up anything I might have missed in March. Ironically, the version on my PC in Word and the version slowly being released to the net are growing more and more diverse.

The reasons for my Sunday editing session is simple - I'm highly critical and I think the next 4 or 5,000 words can either be improved on or cut out altogether. In the grand scheme of things, I looked upon sections such as these as the condiments for the meaty parts; but sometimes there has to be a relevance. For instance, I realised that the opening paragraph in Chapter 15 not only belongs at the end of Chapter 14, but requires a bit of bridge work because the change is so jarring. I have to admit that the serialising was done quickly and I might have missed some logical breaks.

Obviously, if you're not reading My Monthly Curse this means nothing to you, but if you have been then hopefully you'll not notice anything different, apart from maybe it flowing better again.

***

Director's Cut by Kate Bush is possibly the most underwhelming album of 2011 so far, and trust me it's far from a classic year already.

I've been trying to get into some new stuff over the last few weeks, and I suppose you can't class the 'new' Bush album as new stuff by any stretch of the imagination. I mean I've been trying to listen to things I maybe wouldn't and this has included an album by The Unthanks, a soundtrack CD of The Wire and The Pierces...

Nu-Folk doesn't really float my boat, although overall it was the best of the three. Hip hop is an enigma to me; I just think it's a load of shit with no redeemable features and the alt-country sisters, the Pierces are pleasant enough, but I must be listening to the wrong stuff because if it is then famous people must be letting their questionable standards slip.

I have been listening to and thoroughly enjoying the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Cure albums - all classics. Some of the songs make Leonard Cohen seem genuinely upbeat!

***

If you ever watched The Young Ones you might remember Neil the hippy being blown away by the cycle of life - we plant the seed etc. Well, it is pretty funky. my own vegetable excursions this year are having a better than average time of it. My spuds are looking healthy and blight free; my rhubarb crown is bursting out all over and my spinach is just about ready to pick, to encourage more of it to grow and allow me a summer of green leaves. my beans are better than expected in my grow bag experiment and despite the best attentions of one of the shitbag dogs, the beetroots and peppers are thriving. The basil and coriander isn't up yet and my instincts are they won't - I think the seeds were too old (plus, the weather has stopped being good for germinations).

Just as an aside, the spell checker on Google Chrome doesn't accept that a beetroot can be pluralised... Obviously in it's logic you can have more than one of them or the world will end in fire and runny pooh...

***

... Or something like that.

A final thought about Doctor Who. I watched a bit of the Proms concert the other day and it had loads of excerpts from the last 6 years and I realised that for me DW is largely throwaway. I mentioned to the wife that they should bring Davros back, completely forgetting they had. I try very hard to feel the same way about it that I did with some classic US SF in the past, but I can't get past the fact that whoever is in charge of the show, it just lacks ... something.

I really like Matt Smith; I think he would have made an excellent first Doctor - maybe a young William Hartnell - because of his fascination with life and its complexities; but after Ecclestone and Tennant, I just don't think this regressed DW works. What's more, I'm not convinced that this first half of the series is going to hold together logically.

I don't think Steven Moffat has been any more sophisticated or thorough than Russell T Davies. They both have to serve their masters and that is to understand that DW is a kids' programme. A series and a half into Moffat's run and I'm actually growing more ambivalent about the show than I did when Tennant was the Doctor. Now considering the rude things I'd subject Karen Gillan to, this suggests to me that the show hasn't actually gotten any better; it's just got new clothes and I'm beginning to see through them as well.

A Serious Subject

"To argue for controls over the Internet may not be cool. But the Internet was surely not meant to be this way. The geniuses who created the modern web and made it so exciting did not do so in order to create the largest pornography bombardment in human history, to have a global email system weighed down by spam, to encourage hostile hacking into national security secrets, to embolden sectarian bigots to violent threats or mere gossipers to say ill-considered things under the protection of pseudonymity. Of course governments must not be heavy-handed in the way they undo these things. Of course the industry needs to be fostered not fettered. But all revolutions generate unintended consequences that need to be put right. The Internet is no different, except that it is a global revolution. And global questions require global answers." Martin Kettle commenting in The Guardian on Friday, 27 May.

Sometimes I wonder why wise words such as these are not put up as a reason for exploring ways of ensuring the Internet is 'legislated' some how. Those who are vehemently against 'policing', like so many others, are unable to see the middle ground that a journalist like Kettle so obviously picks out. In black and white, not one of the things he lists as a good reason for some monitoring can be argued against without sounding pathetic or obtuse. The porn industry also runs the majority of illegal streaming sites and a lot of torrents site; if there are sites flaunting the rules, then porn is the money behind it, because it gives them free advertising to a large potential target audience - (young) men.

The thing is there's a difference between controls and censorship, but everyone seems to be getting the two confused.

A mate of mine has a 12-year-old daughter; she's been watching a TV series not aimed her age group via downloading it from a torrents site. Apart from the obvious kudos that should be given for being so young but navigating things that would frighten parents away, she was downloading the thing, via a link, on a site I know well and it's pretty much X rated in its advert content. There is little left to the imagination and frankly, if I was 12 I wouldn't want to see that if it was any indication what my adult life would be like.

But how does a family have parental controls on the PC and Internet, especially if they want to visit some of these more salacious sites when the kids have gone to bed? Most parental controls I've seen have passwords and kids seem to have a knack with them, or they circumvent that and use their folks' account/log in details, which will probably be their name and last two digits of their birth year. Should this kid's parent be looking at donkey porn at 2am anyhow, regardless of whether it's their life or not? Is that some kind of breach in parenting law. If a mum is watching aforementioned donkey porn on her PC and her 8 year old walks in, what kind of impression, let alone explanation is it going to have? We've already got pre-teens who are more streetwise than most of my peer group - something that saddens me; kids are losing their childhood far too soon. I get a bit of a nostalgic thrill at seeing kids climbing trees or building dens; it happens about once every three years!

Porn, spam, hacking, terrorist networks, spuriously libellous statements and accusations, fraud and the onus our lives are put on social networking sites now - opening all kinds of ethical and moral dilemmas as well as a complete ignorance of our own personal safety and settings, have made the Internet something that has a thick, unpleasant underbelly; one which we all dance around or with. The net is run by people who are ambivalent about who sees the content - the pre-teens are all a potential future market and not something to be protected; I mean what's the point?

Kettle suggests that the four major ISPs in this country could quite easily put a block on porn with no difficulty, yet no one wants to make the first move. Yet, surely, an ISP that offers its family customers peace of mind and porn free surfing would be financially advantageous? If you had kids, wouldn't you feel happier if you didn't have to worry about what they have access to? ISPs could offer an alternative access, should you want to look at porn, available only after 9pm and by using a verification log in that has to be changed regularly, with some form of proof, such as a credit card or bank account number until we all get retinal scanners on our PCs. I'm sure there is a computer whiz kid out there who could come up with a 99% foolproof programme? There could be punitive measures in place, loss of Internet access if the conditions are breached in any way. It's difficult, and it could quite easily be circumvented.

I remember a guy on an old Yahoogroup I ran, who, apart from giving many people the creeps because he was utterly unsocialised and more than a bit creepy, posted a link to a book published on-line. It was, if I recall, See No Evil and the little bit of it I looked at was probably some of the most vile and pornographic literature ever written. This was stuff you didn't want to see, let alone linked to from an all ages group with kids reading; yet it's just words and people will argue that it has merit in some way; the same way that members of the BNP are allowed to have their beliefs, regardless of how heinous we might find them.

There isn't really any way of differentiating between control and censorship and this makes the debate about governments having control over the Internet remarkably altruistic. For starters, every country would have to agree to a charter they all agreed to and that means cultural differences. The logistics behind it would be immense. I remember this debate back in the 90s and the naturists were the most vocal claiming that there was a difference between pornography and nudity; yet were probably responsible for posting more pictures of naked children and teenagers than the must industrious of paedophiles. The debate would be more understandable if you have a long memory and can remember one-time ITN newsreader Julia Somerville being questioned by police for attempting to develop photographs of her naked children playing in the bath - at bath time, enjoying a family moment; taking pictures to embarrass them with ten years down the line when one brings a new boyfriend home. This was in an era before widespread broadband and global net coverage. If someone posted pictures of that nature on Facebook and someone else happened to mention it or someone else downloaded the pictures (if your security settings are not set to 'friends only') and used then or manipulated them, where would they stand?

The main thing at the moment, illustrated by this Ryan Giggs business and Twitter is that how can you sue 100,000 people who breach an injunction? In print, the footballer could arguably sue the magazine that printed the letter with the revelation in and also the printer and the distributor - all three would be culpable, one for writing/allowing it, one for printing it and one for distributing it. With the net any anonymous person could accuse anyone of anything and there's no comeback. You can't really sue the ISP; however interesting the idea might sound; however getting them all to agree to release personal details of the individual using a specific IP address might stop people from running illegal sites and make people be more careful about the things they say on line - a wee bit of self-awareness never hurt anyone in an age where you can instantly send an email you might live to regret.

Akhenatan's Hangover

I’m currently sitting here nursing a hangover and listening to a cassette of the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy (although I don’t believe the Conspiracy had started at this point) playing a live gig in Oxford in around 1984. A gig where I was standing in the front and got a (kind of) name check during a riotous rendition of A Few of My favourite Things. I realised that it’s been at least 15 years since I played this tape and I’m quite impressed by the sound quality; even if me, the wife (girlfriend at the time), Joolz, Mitch and the rest of our small entourage from Northampton were the only noisy people in the crowd.

Anyhow, all this nostalgia is not why I’m here today. I’m here to talk about my hangover and how I came about it.

One Ell and I went for our customary weekly drink up the Queen Adelaide and Paul the landlord asked us if we wanted to be two of the judges at this year’s BIG Beer festival at Delapre Abbey. I realise that’s like asking if the pope is catholic, but sadly One El couldn’t do it because he has to earn money, so I roped Roger into it and we got to Delapre for 8pm. I was like an excited kid all day – what a result!

Except Paul got the times wrong and we needed to be there for 6pm; far too early for either of us and therefore we missed the judging and therefore the free beer... So we bought some tickets and decided to get drunk anyhow. Except, neither of us were particularly enamoured by the 300 odd beers on offer. Yes, you heard that correctly. Blonde Volupta from Oldershaws was a divine beer, but at 5% isn’t for a session unless you want to be praying to God on the big white telephone at 2am. Salopian Lemon Dream is still a good, zesty pint and at 4.3% is borderline session ale. But, of the other 8 beers we tried, none of them could really compete. Even my White Squall from the hallowed Newby Wyke Brewery was below par and it was the only one of the 4 from the Lincolnshire brewery that was ready to drink; so I didn’t get to try their new Summer Session 3.8% jobby.

It was cold; there was rain in the air; there was barely a seat available and yet it was about a fifth of the attendance that will be there tonight and tomorrow and my sciatica decided to play up and on top of a massive curry and biryani for dinner, by the time I got to my 5th half I was feeling bloated and uncomfortable. So we decided to go home. Neither of us was impressed with the beer on offer; disappointed that yet again there was no Oakham beer and a tad underwhelmed – the beer festival, which we’ve been to four years on the trot now, seems to be declining rather than improving and that’s a shame considering all the great beers out there.

So we began the long walk back into town – the Abbey for those who don’t know is about a mile from the town centre, maybe a tad more, but the last ¼ of a mile is up hill. Not a steep hill, just a debilitating one for a fat, half pissed bloated bastard. Except, I wouldn’t have been half pissed if Roger hadn’t, quite easily, twisted my arm about having a swift pint in the Malt Shovel. The Beer festival might not have had any Oakham ales, but the Malt did; my favourite Bishop’s Farewell and their new beer Akhenatan, which is essentially like their funky Citra beer but with massive hairy balls! We had a pint and a half in there and would have had more for fear of not having enough money to get the taxi that Roger had declared we were getting home.

There was more atmosphere in the Malt than there was at the Festival; there was a very fit young lady playing in the darts team, which we struggled to keep our eyes off; especially her cosmic leggings and feeling drunk enough not to feel like a lecherous old git, we left without a pang of voyeuristic guilt. The walk from the Malt to the taxi rank means walking up the hill and by this time my new trainers were screaming at my feet and the extra beer had not made me feel any less bloated and I trudged past the big church, I wondered if I was actually supposed to have enjoyed myself. Roger keeps things buoyant, but even he couldn’t compensate for the cold, the wind, the decidedly February like conditions and it brought back memories of our 2000 Trees festival in 2009, where July transformed into January just for us (and countless holidays where monsoons have hit parts of Scotland and Wales).

The Lengths Some People Go To

There might be strange things going on and not all of them are easily explained...

I don't know if my security has been compromised, but I'm writing this in the most peculiar way (for me) and I have no guarantee it will even appear.

I'd like to say that Blogger is buggered, but it doesn't appear that other people are experiencing the problems I am. Let me start at the beginning.

I discovered just recently that I can't sign out of my account on Blogger. It's permanently signed in on this computer; so when I tried to create a blog for Roger and I to wibble on about our sports interests, it wouldn't allow me to do it. It essentially would not let me log out and I struggled to get my head around it, so I created a WordPress blog for us both. But the nagging feeling wouldn't go away, so I decided to try and see if it was a peculiarity of me using Google Chrome as a web browser. So I opened Firefox, went to Blogger, created a new account, did a test post, was satisfied that it was a fault with Chrome and then ... couldn't sign out.

Anyhow, I had something to talk about, so opened up Chrome this morning and went to Blogger and was asked for my details; something I haven't had to do for a long time. I did this, figuring that whatever problem it was had been sorted. Except, it wouldn't sign me in. It accepted my details, but wouldn't let me leave the sign in page. I scratched my head, perplexed. I searched around Blogger's site for some info; emailed Roger and tried to access my fake account on Firefox. There was nothing helpful from Blogger. Roger was in and using it and my fake account would let me post something. Very weird.

So I went through the signing in bollocks; got confirmation, changed my password, cleared my cache and did all the other suggestions that I usually sneer at as bollocks. Still no access to my blogs. Hm... This was getting annoying. Then I noticed I had two emails from Blogger regarding access; one of them said it had found another blog linked to me and would I like to link it directly?

Huh? Another blog? Not likely. But I thought it might be a clue to what is happening. So I clicked on the link and it tells me that the blog - Secrets & Lies - was now linked to my blog list. Of course, because I still could not get into my own account I couldn't look at it. So, I used my fake account to access Phill Hall blogs and there it was, Secrets & Lies. It had been created on May 25 and was ornate, had my profile prominently displayed and the description: The real story behind Phil Hall's life in comics.

I certainly didn't do it. But, it's got to have come from somewhere. The obvious giveaway is that my first name has been spelled the old way and that it was unlinked, but somehow associated with me in some way. Like I said, weird.

So, if you are reading this, how have I managed to get into my blogs? Well, I'm using Internet Explorer, which allowed me to sign in, which suggests the problem could be linked to my browsers - Chrome and Firefox; seems unlikely, but why else? Of course, I haven't tried to post anything or sign out of this account yet, but at the moment I have access to what is rightfully mine, which dispenses with the idea that I might have been hacked a lot worse than is apparent. because, I must have had some attack, otherwise this phantom blog wouldn't have appeared.

Anyhow; I can't be arsed farting about like this to maintain Blogger blogs if they're going to screw me about; so I've created two new blogs on WordPress, which will, unless things get back to normal, take over the publishing of this blog and will continue to serialised My Monthly Curse on a separate blog. I'll give the URLs and stuff when I've got them looking how I want them and am sure that I'm doing everything right, because WordPress makes Blogger look like a system designed for idiots... oh...

The wrinkles don't stop though. The reason I don't use IE is because of it's crapness. I wrote a blog entry this morning, in Word, because of the Blogger difficulties. When I came to cut and paste it into an empty template; IE wouldn't let me paste anything. The paste tool appears to be disabled. It won't even let me cut and paste text from this blog entry! At least not by using right click. IE is monstrously bad, complicated and I really hope I don't have to use it again for a long time...

Goat Cheese Enema

According to the front page of the Guardian, if you are Asian you stand 42 times more likely to be arrested or questioned on suspicion of terrorism. 42, huh? That's extremely specific, don't you think? Did they round that figure up from 41.5 times or down from 42.3 times? Who did the maths?

***

As a friend of a friend pointed out; the Guardian also ran a lovely little letter from a reader asking if the public could take superinjunctions out against celebrities, so we don't have to read about them any more!

***

Ryan Giggs shags large breasted glory hunting dog while leaving his wife and kids at home to watch Corry - come on, sue me, you hairy Welsh midget!

***

So, for some reason Bob Dylan turning 70 is headline news. I thought it was August where we saw dancing sheep and women giving birth to 6 babies she had no idea she was carrying type stories? I'll be 50 next year, perhaps the BBC will do an Alan Yentob special on me?

***

My boiler was serviced by a man from Ghana. He was also a Liverpool fan. I had just two words for him - Luis Suarez.

***

I've been mildly enjoying Game of Thongs or whatever it's called (despite all the thundering Yorkshire accents in it), but I have several problems in general...

George RR Martin. Now have his middle names really got Rs at the start of them or did he think, 'hm, it worked for Tolkien'.

If this series takes place on a different world, how come they all have normal(ish) names. Jamie and Robert just two examples? Or the fact that it looks like Earth and has all the same creatures as Earth.

Did the author (or maybe the producers of the series) think: what do fanboys love more than anything else? Blood, guts, sex, incest, homosexuality, dwarfs, using the C word for no apparent reason and dragons, would be my guess. All stock examples of generic science fantasy. Did Martin actually have an idea or did he just take all fantasy elements, chuck them in a bowl and waited for something to come crawling out of the slime?

Don't get me wrong - compared to Starz's Camelot, which, apart from Joseph Ffiennes's splendid Merlin, is just a mishmash of nudity and bad acting, Game of Thrones is top drawer entertainment. It's just a bit... you know... nerdy. I'm watching it with half an eye on whatever the next stereotypical fantasy element is about to make an appearance.

The dwarf is great though. best actor in the series. Best role. Best lines and storyline. Class act.

***

Apparently an Italian music promoter reckons he can tempt Talk Talk out of retirement. Good luck with that one!

***

Having spent the last 10 days playing the 28 audio cassettes I deemed worthy of not throwing away, it is amazing how they ever proved to be so popular, apart from the ease of portability. The quality is remarkably shit, it takes forever to rewind or fast forward and in my infinite wisdom, when I put all these tapes together, I opted not to include any information on the inlay cards. This has led me to writing in marker open on several - I don't know what it is, but Keep!

***

Do abacuses count for anything?