Thoughtcat

Thoughtcat moves to WordPress - radical makeover ahoy!

2009-06-21T18:53:00.001+01:00

After many years of creating my own not-particularly-good web pages at thoughtcat.com and maintaining the site and blog separately, I’ve finally got around to putting everything under one roof on WordPress – or starting to, anyway. Thus if you're on thoughtcat.com and are taken to http://thoughtcat.wordpress.com, don’t panic – no impostor has taken over the site while I was asleep! (At least I don’t think so…)

All the posts from the original Blogger blog are now on WordPress, which is to say they are both here and there (or there and here, if you're reading this on Blogger, or there and there, even, if you're reading this on Posterous or Facebook). This is the last post to appear on the Blogger blog (*sniff*); any posts as of 22nd June 2009 will only appear on the WordPress site.

Some of the static pages and ‘home-made blog’ posts from the original Thoughtcat site have also been transferred. This migration is an ongoing process, and progress is being tracked on the ‘latest updates’ box on the new home page. As this will take several months to complete, none of the content will be removed from its original place until it’s all been moved, so no links will be broken, although I might periodically update the original pages to automatically redirect to the new ones.

Basically, if you now click a thoughtcat.com link, for the time being chances are you will go to the original item there as normal, but if you click a link on WordPress you will either be taken to the relevant bit of thoughtcat.com or to the new WordPress item. The only page which is really neither here nor there at the moment is the original thoughtcat.com home page, since going to that URL will now redirect you to the WordPress home page, but pretty much all the content and links from that page have been transferred to the WordPress site in one form or another - for instance the links to favourite sites and books now appear on the links page, and highlights from the site and blog are now listed on the good stuff page. The buy stuff page rounds up the Riddley Walker DVDs, the All My Own Work book and the CafePress merchandise.

If you do find a broken link or something seems to be lost, or have a comment on the new site, or just feel like shooting the breeze about something on here (or there), please get in touch. In the meantime I hope you enjoy the makeover. I think it counts as using up one of my nine lives, but that's showbiz...

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All My Own Work on Amazon - now back to regular price

2009-06-06T12:04:00.001+01:00

Further to my post last week reporting that Stephen Miles's 2006 comedy novel All My Own Work is now being listed on Amazon at a shocking $17, this morning Thoughtcat has received the following from publisher Lulu:

"All My Own Work was listed on Amazon as part of Lulu's Amazon marketplace pilot. We've been reading the forum posts and emails and have learned a great deal since we launched the pilot. The majority of our authors have responded positively and many are already seeing an increase in their book sales.

"Based on your feedback and after reading the policies of several marketplaces, we've decided to match your titles listing price on Lulu with the listing price on Amazon by removing the 30% markup."

The email goes on to emphasise that this is a pilot and the Amazon price may go back up again at some point, but for the time being at least, if you prefer to buy the book through Amazon than Lulu, it won't cost you any more to do so. Yay!

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Sorry Costcutter, I just couldn't resist it

2009-05-31T17:39:00.001+01:00

I spotted this the other day:

- and thought it was just crying out for this:

All My Own Work now available from Amazon

2009-05-29T08:32:00.001+01:00

Stephen Miles's 2006 'memoir' All My Own Work, which is exclusive to Thoughtcat, is now available from Amazon at $16.90.

Until now it had only been available direct from publisher Lulu at a somewhat lower price - it's now $11 (about £8) + p&p from that site.

The Amazon listing was automatically managed by Lulu and has not been authorised by Thoughtcat. In its email to Thoughtcat this week, Lulu explains that 'Amazon charges a fee to list your book, and in order to cover that cost your book will be listed with a 30% markup; however your royalty will remain the same, and your book's price on Lulu will not change.'

Therefore although both Stephen and Thoughtcat are happy about the potentially greater visibility of the book on Amazon - which we'd never really looked into because until now we needed a proper ISBN to get a listing, which Lulu charged about £100 for - it makes no difference to us in terms of revenue if people buy it direct from the publisher.

All My Own Work tells the story of how British writer Miles won a £10,000 UK literary prize, the Leonard Sankey Award for New Talent in Fiction, and was then controversially stripped of the award. Thoughtcat has never been very clear whether the book is a novel with aspirations to being a memoir or the other way round but it is a very good read either way, described by Lost Army of Cambyses author Paul Sussman as 'clever and original ... extremely witty'.

Further information including sample chapters, an author interview and reader feedback can be found at http://thoughtcat.wordpress.com/buy-stuff/allmyownwork/

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I don't think Liz Taylor writes her own tweets...

2009-05-25T18:36:00.001+01:00

...and even if she did I doubt whether I'd follow her.

I admit I was tempted when I read this tweet a few minutes ago, linking to this article on, er, The Money Times. I was impressed - not only because she is (it has to be said) of advanced years, not just because she's Twittering from her hospital bed, but because she's bloody Dame Elizabeth Taylor, for heaven's sake! I've never exactly been a fan, and there is the small matter of the friendship with Michael Jackson. But she's an institution! She was in all those amazing movies in the fifties, before I was even born! She was in Antony and Cleopatra! She was married to Richard Burton! Twice! And here she is, in 2009, still with us, and tweeting. Incredible.

Except I can't convince myself it's actually her doing it. Not because it's difficult, not because she doesn't have the ability, but because there's just something too weird and unlikely about Liz Taylor typing a message on a keyboard or an iPhone. I mean, if you were Dame Elizabeth wouldn't you get someone to do it for you? I can believe the sentiments (about animals, charities, diamonds, fans and so on) are hers, but I still can't picture her actually bothering to put manicured finger to touch-screen. There must be a PR guy who comes in to see her a couple of times a day and asks her what she wants to tweet, or who's at the end of the phone any time she feels like 'communicating' with her fans. Or quite possibly both.

Okay, maybe I'm out of line. People are strange. You're just as likely to find a 30-year-old who doesn't even know what Twitter is (as I did recently) as you are to find an 80-year-old using it as naturally as people once wrote postcards. But I just can't get used to the idea.

Call me a purist, but I don't see the point of following a Twitterstream not written directly by the person themselves. I don't even mind when they're honestly updated by someone else, with tweets saying things like '[celebrity's name] is working on his new album and planning a tour', because they're just using the Twitter platform, as they already do all media channels, as a way to get information out there about what they're doing to people who want to listen. But even the slightest thought of getting someone to tweet on your behalf that you're 'eating brie on a toasted baguette right now' just makes me shudder.

Sting once said that cocaine was God's way of telling you you've got too much money. I reckon that having someone ghost tweets about what you're eating has overtaken that in the 21st century.

Anyway, the following update from Liz's Twitter was what decided it for me, regardless of who typed it: 'Presents make everybody happy. My friend Arnie Klein gave me a Matisse today! Happy.'

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Some bloke implicated in Madeleine McCann case... or not.

2009-05-22T20:57:00.001+01:00

Private detectives investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are examining reports that a convicted British paedophile lived an hour's drive from the area where she vanished, reports the Guardian today.

A few paragraphs in however, the story turns out to be actually a report on a report, in this case from the Daily Mirror, which has published a photo of the man in question.

So, will the detectives be interviewing every other person with convictions for child abuse who lived within a 30-mile radius of Praia da Luz in May 2007?

I do hope so, otherwise it might seem a bit like a vendetta against one bloke by a nasty British red-top intent on fingering someone, anyone, for Madeleine's disappearance to sell more newspapers.

I am not defending anybody who commits crimes against children, but everyone deserves a fair trial, which this sort of reporting will compromise - not to mention run the risk of setting off a gaggle of bonkers Mirror-waving vigilantes.

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MPs' hypocrisy over Speaker's exit on expenses

2009-05-20T07:09:00.001+01:00

I am glad that Michael Martin is resigning, as he fought long and hard to prevent MPs' expenses details from being released to the public. But I still found it hard to stomach the sight of some of those very MPs in the Commons this week calling for his resignation. Where were those calls throughout all the years he was campaigning against the release of this information? Then again I sympathise, as it's very hard to call for anything when your nose is so far down in the trough.

MPs have found a scapegoat, as they always do. Last week's scapegoat was the fees office, of course, but they can't sack that in quite the same way.

What's even worse now is the sight of Gordon Brown at yesterday's Number 10 press conference saying that Parliament cannot be run like some 'gentlemen's club ... where the members make up the rules, and operate them among themselves'. The sentiment may be welcome, but the tone was as if he is now getting on top of this crisis and drawing a line under it and punishing those responsible. This is, to use a technical term, bollocks. He hasn't done anything of the sort. Gordon, it has never been acceptable to run the Commons in this way and you should have come out and said it years ago - not wait til you were all caught with your pants down and your trotters in the till.

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Ian Hislop vs... Tom Waits?!

2009-05-10T08:52:00.001+01:00

You learn something new every day... there I was last night watching Have I Got a Bit More News for You and nearly falling asleep when the show ended and the announcer announced that Mark Lawson was now interviewing Ian Hislop on BBC4. This woke me up - I've long been a fan of Hislop in his role as editor of Private Eye and HIGNFY stalwart, but Lawson's interviews are always worth watching (with the possible exception of the one with Phil Collins, which I think sent me to sleep). The next hour was great fun, Hislop chatting affably about his childhood, how he got started in comedy and satire, his run-ins with the legal system and his now some 20 years on HIGNFY. Best of all though they showed a clip from his first ever TV appearance in the early 80s, which I'd never seen before - no less an interview with Tom Waits, another of my all-time favourite people. The pairing in fact seemed so unlikely that I had to check I wasn't mis-hearing when Hislop uttered Waits's name - I thought surely he'll correct himself in a moment and say it was some other Tom (not that I can think of any other Toms right now, but even so), but he didn't. Here is that fateful encounter:

It's not great quality but basically Waits is plugging his new album (not sure of the date, possibly Rain Dogs?) in his trademark mumble-slur, and Hislop tries to get him to speak up. 'Plug it a bit louder,' says Hislop. Waits looks round to check he heard him right, realises silently that he did, and growls 'I'll plug it in my own damn way!' Hislop gets no help from the audience or his other guests (rightly so), and in the Lawson interview concedes he thought Waits might thump him...

All excellent stuff. In the meantime the Lawson - Hislop interview can still be seen on iPlayer.

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Wolfram Alpha - "it's as important as Google".

2009-04-30T15:29:00.001+01:00

The BBC reports today on Wolfram Alpha, "the brainchild of British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram.

"The free program aims to answer questions directly, rather than display web pages in response to a query like a search engine.

"The 'computational knowledge engine', as the technology is known, will be available to the public from the middle of May this year."

Not to prejudge it or anything but my gut feeling is it can't be *that* good because it's named after its inventor. Think of the great internet successes such as Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter... all names chosen to describe the *service*, not to honour the guy(s) who came up with it. Even the web itself, as Stephen Fry once pointed out, could have permanently contained a reference to its creator Tim Berners-Lee with the prefix 'tim' (standing for 'The Information Mine') instead of the good old 'www' that we have all come to know and, er, love. But it didn't.

Anyway, I'll be keeping an eye on http://www.wolframalpha.com/ over the coming days...

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Mandelson following fake "Brown" on Twitter. Who's going to tell him? Not me :)

2009-04-17T09:07:00.001+01:00

Peter Mandelson is now on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lordmandelson

(Check out that modest user name!)

One of the people he's following appears to be Gordon Brown: http://twitter.com/RHGordonBrown/followers

But, could that Gordon Brown be... a fake??? http://twitter.com/RHGordonBrown

I wonder if someone should tell Peter, who says at http://twitter.com/lordmandelson/status/1189885663 "it's the best I can do to get the hang of Twitter"?

Nah, me neither :)

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Virgin Media now giving no choice over TV on Demand

2009-04-04T11:59:00.002+01:00

The following is the text of a letter I've sent today to Guardian Money:

This morning I got up and as usual put on the Cartoon Network channel for my children on our Virgin "TV Choice On Demand" service. Instead however I got an on-screen message saying I had to pay to subscribe to this service. This seemed to be a fault, as TV Choice On Demand has been included in the "medium" TV, phone and broadband package I've had with Virgin for the past 20 months. I rang to report the fault but was told that in fact Virgin had now decided - at no written notice - to withdraw TV Choice On Demand from the medium package, for which I am paying £28 per month. An "upgrade" to the XL package (i.e. to the service I was getting until yesterday, albeit with some extra channels thrown in) would cost an extra £7 per month for 3 months rising to an extra £17 per month thereafter. When I complained, I was all but told I should be grateful for having had the TV Choice service free for the past two years, when in fact what Virgin are now doing is charging me the same monthly fee for fewer services. Although I feel this is unfair, I may not have minded quite so much if I'd been given adequate notice and therefore a real "choice" in the matter. Ending a service overnight so that your kids are suddenly prevented from watching their favourite cartoons unless you fork out more is sharp practice of the lowest order.

Yrs etc.

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April fools

2009-04-03T08:16:00.004+01:00

This week's April Fools' Day is already starting to look like old hat (my excuse for not posting on the day itself being that I was in London - working, not protesting, although sympathising with most of the protesters, while thinking it was a shame that Barack Obama's first visit to the UK couldn't have been more of a celebration).

Even so, my favourite was the Guardian's story that it would no longer be available in print but only on Twitter, with every story compressed to 140 characters. This included its 188-year news archive: "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?" The claim that "Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status updates from Stephen Fry" may well not have been a spoof, and the paper gets extra marks for its combination of the Guardian and Twitter into "Gutter" and then with WordPress into "GutterPress".

Later in the day the Guardian also published a useful round-up of April foolishness (I didn't spot the upside-down YouTube pages, probably because every time I tried getting on to YT on Wednesday my T-Mobile broadband blocked it with its new content lock feature which I had to unlock by entering my credit card details - quite why YT content is classed as dodgy I don't know).

My second favourite fool was the BBC's item on the rising cost of tea, which, being the BBC, was so well done (or just so conservatively done) it was frighteningly plausible. The only other "may actually be true" candidate I spotted was a report on a comparatively obscure website that the Leonard Cohen songs Suzanne and Bird on a Wire were coming soon for the Guitar Hero video game (maybe next year I'll remember to do a spoof combining the game with my version of Hallelujah and call it Ukulele Hero).

I'm sure there were many more but that's all I saw. Oh, and apparently over at SA4QE there was something silly about a new dating service for Russell Hoban fans called SA4QrelatE, but I shouldn't imagine too many people were taken in by it...

Andrew Motion: life's hard on the front line of middle class England

2009-03-23T14:25:00.002Z

I've always found Andrew Motion one of our more boring poets, to be honest, but his comments in Saturday's Guardian about his experiences as poet laureate are particularly dull. I don't think less of him for not going to Iraq and Afghanistan, but I do find it disingenuous for him to say the reason he didn't write about the wars was because nobody 'encouraged' him by flying him there. Bush and Blair never had much encouragement from their domestic audiences but that didn't stop them from airing their opinions whenever possible. And if Motion had felt the poet laureateship cramped his style he could always have quit while he was, er, ahead. Just lie down and have another Lemsip, Andy.

EDIT: Actually this is a bit unfair. Motion did write two poems in protest against the Iraq war, which can be found linked from the abobe Wikipedia page. I just thought his remarks were a bit daft - if he'd really wanted to go out there surely it could've been arranged...

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Doing something mildly amusing for money

2009-03-14T10:01:00.005Z

As lots of people have been doing something faintly embarrassing in the past 24 hours in aid of Red Nose Day, here is my contribution, a version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah I did on my new Makala ukulele, inspired by George Formby.

This was incidentally something I thought of doing ages ago but it took me this long to (a) buy the uke, (b) teach myself to play it, (c) have the guts to do it, (d) get all the way through a version without cocking it up and (e) get YouTube to play it properly. The first version I uploaded, which was the native .asf file format which my Samsung netbook's webcam produced, had the audio/video 10 seconds out of sync, making me look like I was miming for a bit and then lipsynching badly for the rest of the 'performance'. After casting for suggestions on YakYak I was advised to convert the file to a more YouTube-friendly format before uploading. I messed around with MediaCoder for a while but was bamboozled by its myriad settings, and then someone suggested I tried iPodme, which worked a treat.

Another funny thing is that I thought this would be a fairly original thing to do, but when I finally uploaded it to YT and looked at the related videos I found there was a whole Leonard-Cohen-ukulele-covers subculture on there. The other versions of Hallelujah I watched though do mostly take the song quite seriously, so maybe mine is unusual in that respect...

Putting Private Eye right on Twitter and the internet

2009-03-05T14:10:00.002Z

A couple of weeks back I emailed a letter to Private Eye about two items that appeared in their issue number 1230 (the one that's just gone off sale). I have now received a reply from 'The Ed' saying 'Thank you for your letter. I am sorry not to publish it in Private Eye.' So as not to lose this essential correspondence, here is my letter, slightly edited for clarity.

Dear Sir,

At the risk of appearing in Pedants' Corner, the Stephen Fry Twitter column in this issue is wrong in a number of ways.

You only use the @ sign when *you* are addressing another Twitter user, not when they address you. So I was confused to read in Fry's twitterstream '@Wossy', expecting this to prefix a typically erudite Fry remark directed at Jonathan Ross, when it was actually a knob gag from Wossy to Fry. Next time just drop the @ sign for remarks sent to Fry by other Twitterers and only use it when Stevie tweets at them. Or better still, do the world a favour and drop Wossy's knob.

Also, a couple of tweets are longer than the maximum 140 characters allowed by Twitter. The one about 'Getting stuck in one lift may be considered a misfortune; getting stuck in two lifts starts to look like carelessness' is actually 153 characters. (Sad, aren't I?)

Finally, the whole thing is back-to-front, as on the real Twitter the most recent tweets appear at the top of the page, not the bottom. That said, your version is designed to be read by humans, which Twitter frankly isn't, so that's actually a vast improvement on the original.

Twitter aside, there also appear to be some misconceptions in the 'Telegraph twits' article on page 7 of the same issue. You don't 'surf' 'popular internet search keywords when writing copy for the online edition', you just 'use' the terms or 'include' them. One 'surfs' the web as a whole, i.e. to find out information. In any case, criticising this behaviour as an example of the dumbing-down of journalism is more than a little naive in these days of the information superhighway. If you don't include relevant keywords in your online content, then people won't find it - it's as simple as that. It only becomes dubious if you contrive to include terms which have nothing to do with what you're actually writing about - for instance if I were to gratuitously insert the keywords sex, drugs and rock'n'roll in this paragraph. Then again, it wouldn't make any difference, as your letters don't go on your website.*

I'll shut up now.

Yours etc.

* This one is going on mine though :)

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Writers 'hate writing' (non-) shocker

2009-03-03T13:50:00.002Z

There's an enjoyable piece in today's Guardian in which nine authors comment briefly on whether they actually like writing or not. It makes reassuring reading for anyone who's ever tried to write anything longer than a postcard. Hari Kunzru, not in my experience known for modesty, admits here: 'there are the pitfalls of self-disgust, boredom, disorientation and a lingering sense of inadequacy, occasionally alternating with episodes of hysterical self-congratulation as you fleetingly believe you've nailed that particular sentence and are surely destined to join the ranks of the immortals, only to be confronted the next morning with an appalling farrago of clichés that no sane human could read without vomiting.' Which is, in a word, succinct.

Will Self, by contrast, loves every bit of the writing process: 'most seductive of all [is] the buying of stationery'. I used to enjoy that part of writing as well, at least until computers came along and killed the need for pens and Tippex. Then again, I still get a rush of excitement looking at a nice blank notebook whenever I'm in Smiths or Rymans. For anyone who shares this particular fetish, here are some pictures of blank notebooks.

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Having mixed feelings over the Goodwin pension debacle

2009-02-27T16:36:00.002Z

Gordon Brown is getting all uptight at ex-RBS chief Sir Fred Goodwin's decision to keep his massive pension, despite the bank's record losses of umpteen billion.

While Fred is undoubtedly an odious whelk, I can't help but think that Gordon has got things out of proportion. Sure a £16m pension pot is an outrageous amount, but it's a drop in the ocean in terms of the banking bailouts and the general economic crisis.

Gordon's explosion is all a smokescreen. The PM's ire would be far better turned on himself for permitting characters like Goodwin to prosper with such catastrophic results for the past decade.

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The man who gives a dinner party to strangers every week

2009-02-26T15:36:00.002Z

I was trapped on a long train journey the other day and picked up one of those free papers that I love to hate - you know the ones which you see everyone on the train all reading at the same time, and when you finally succumb and pick one up you can't find any actual news in it. This one though had an interview with a guy called Jim Haynes, who has hosted a dinner party at his flat in Paris every week for the past 30 years, and anyone who calls (or emails) to book can attend, even complete strangers. Everyone chips in towards the cost of the food and Haynes claims he's only had one dodgy guest in all that time. His website is slightly odd and (as he admits) self-indulgent but he seems a fascinating guy. Next time I'm in Paris I think I'll look him up... :)

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My random fake album cover

2009-02-23T14:04:00.002Z

A cool Facebook group called Random Album Cover Creations is currently exhorting people to create their own 'random fake album cover' and post them online.

Some are hilarious, others impossible to tell apart from the real thing ;-)

The rules are as follows:

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit "random... Read More... Read More" or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on "explore the last seven days"
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post it to this group

Or just post it to Posterous :)

Mine is posted here - not one of the more random ones, but still reasonably random.

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Anyone for a Starbucks instant? Not me

2009-02-19T06:59:00.002Z

Zoe Williams reviews Starbucks's latest offering, instant coffee, in today's Grauniad.

The verdict? 'Not even as nice as Nescafe.' Which is saying something.

Also, to describe (as Zoe does) Starbucks's's's regular coffee as 'hot and wet' is, in my opinion, generous.

I doubt on the strength of that review that I'll be bothering. Where there's no real stuff available (and let's face it, making decent real coffee is expensive and/or messy), for me it has to be Douwe Egberts. (That website incidentally is spooky, featuring a virtual bloke 'serving' you from behind a coffee shop counter.) Here's my recipe for the perfect cup of instant:

1. Put large heaped teaspoon of Douwe Egberts Pure Gold into a mug. Add brown sugar to taste.
2. Boil a kettle and leave it to stand for a few seconds.
3. Pour a little of the hot water into the mug, just enough to cover the coffee and sugar.
4. Swish it round until coffee and sugar are more or less dissolved.
5. Pour in cold milk until the mug is about 2/3 full.
6. Put mug in microwave for 1 min on full power.
7. Top up with more hot water and stir.

That way you get a nice creamy top and good temperature and consistency, and although it'll never taste quite like the real thing, it does still taste better than a Starbucks :-)

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Blackout? How would I know?

2009-02-16T07:59:00.002Z

Woke up this morning, as the old blues singers used to sing, got no electricity. Lights, kettle, toaster, even the central heating all off. Check the fusebox, but all in order there. Maybe it's a power cut! Haven't had one of those in years. Look out the window - no lights on in any of the houses in the street. It must be a power cut, or powercut, or blackout (he says in a transparent attempt to get as many searchable homonyms into one post). Excitement of same quickly replaced by fear as I realise that practically everything in the house, and my life, is totally dependent on electricity. No internet connection, as we have cable, and our computers are connected via a router anyway (oh for the simple old days of plugging your PC direct into your phone socket). No landline, indeed, as phone is of cordless variety. Can't have a shower. Can boil water for a cup of tea, if I can find the matches. The only gadget working is my mobile phone, and that only because I remembered to charge it yesterday. But the web being down is the worrying thing. How am I going to get news about whether the power cut is local, regional, nationwide, global?? How would I know if there had been an alien invasion and the world is already at the green ones' mercy? Note to self: invest in wind-up radio sharpish. And possibly wind-up internet connection.

Cover the kids with extra blankets and go back to bed. Not something I'd normally do but it's the only source of heat. Turn on bedside lamp so that when (if!) electric comes back on I will know about it. Lay in the dark wondering at what point I should start to worry, call the landlord, call the council, call work, sign up with a ragged army of freedom-fighters to beat the invasion. Actually, thinking about it, if it was an alien attack, they would surely be clever enough to disable all electricity and web connections precisely so that nobody would know what was going on. Catch us underwears, as it were. They didn't get our mobiles though - maybe they can't control the batteries. But surely they'll have the networks down any second?? Oh come on, it's not aliens. There are no ships in the sky. So how did it happen? This is the 21st century. Are we rationing electricity now? Has the economic crisis brought us to this already? I blame Gordon Brown.

And then suddenly, with a flash of bedside table-lamp, a beep of cordless phone recharge and a whoosh! of central heating, everything snaps on again, at exactly 7am, as if someone at the National Grid had everything on a timer. Maybe that's not far from the truth. The rationing of juice suddenly seems quite rational.

Normally I would be up, showered, shaved, dressed and working by now but I'm typing this instead in my pyjamas, with tea and toast, hoping it doesn't all snap off again. My excuse is the house is cold, got to wait for it to warm up again before I jump in the shower.

Go straight to Twitter when turn on PC. Stephen Fry's latest tweet is at the top of my feed, referring to a blackout. His avatar, normally his cheery boat-race, is a black square. What?! Has the National Grid's reach stretched to Twitter avatars too now? But he's not in the midlands, surely? He lives in London, when he's in the UK. Was this a national crisis? Hang on, I don't think he's even in the country. He's travelling somewhere. It is a global crisis! The whole world is blacked out! It IS an alien invasion, and it's still Gordon Brown's fault! Actually, not - he's blacked it out in protest against a draconian New Zealand copyright law. That sounds bad, but I have to admit I breath a sigh of relief. Such excitement of a Monday, and I'm not even dressed yet.

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Gordon 'gets tough' with the bankers

2009-02-09T10:14:00.002Z

The BBC reports Gordon Brown as saying that the culture of rewarding bankers for failure and short term gain is being "swept away", and that Labour would "aggressively" pursue action to ensure that future rewards for bankers were based on "long-term success" and failure was penalised.

The words horse, bolt, shutting, and door all come to mind. I'm sure the bankers are quaking in their boots.

Backdate the "aggressiveness", Gordon, if you want to truly atone for your government's pathetic lack of bank regulation in the past decade.

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Happy birthday, Russell Hoban!

2009-02-04T07:20:00.002Z

As The Times admirably notes, today is author Russell Hoban's 84th birthday. (The interview the Times piece quotes from is here.) As Thoughtcat readers will already know, 4th February is SA4QE day, when fans of Russ leave their favourite quotes from his books in public places - usually, but not always, on sheets of A4 paper. SA4QE stands for the Slickman A4 Quotation Event, named after Neo-Futurist Chicago actor Diana Slickman, who started the whole thing off back in 2002.

I should be leaving my own yellow paper quote somewhere today, if I can (a) make up my mind which of the many great quotes to use from Russ's 50+ books, and (b) dig myself out of the snow.

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Finally the Daily Express uses an accurate URL

2009-02-03T13:53:00.002Z

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/79820/utter-cock-as-usual

Found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2009/feb/03/url-cock-up-express-story

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George Bush - he's not dead yet, you know

2009-02-02T18:54:00.002Z

The Guardian Weekend magazine has a questionnaire thing called Q&A it puts to a different celebrity each week. The questions - some serious, some less so - are always the same, with the exception of the downright cheeky but irresistible 'How often do you have sex?', which only sometimes gets answered. (It's not actually clear whether the interviewees get the choice of answering the question - although of course they can't exactly be forced to - or the mag only asks it in the first place at its discretion.) Anyway, one of the other questions is 'Which living person do you most despise?' Unsurprisingly, most people answer 'George Bush', to the point where one reader recently wrote saying the question should be changed to 'Which living person apart from George Bush do you most despise?' Last week however, Streets frontman Mike Skinner's reply was 'Boris, idiot mayor of London'. Given that Boris Johnson has never, to my knowledge, started a war on a false premise which has seen thousands killed, I thought this a tad harsh, but then that's the problem - Bush has set the bar so high that to name anyone else (apart perhaps from Tony Blair or the truly disgusting Robert Mugabe, who gets off lightly) just seems ridiculous. This week a reader comments on Skinner's choice, saying that since Bush's 'demise' last month the respondents to Q&A are clearly finding they're having to use their imaginations a bit more. But this reader (not to mention the Weekend letters editor) seems a tad confused, since last I heard, being voted out of office does not rule you out of being a living person, so I feel we can expect George to turn up in Q&A for some time to come. Then again, Bush never really counted as a fully-alive human being for the whole of his presidency, so maybe not... although of course that would disqualify him from being named by all those Q&A respondents over the past eight years, so we can't have that. Anyway, I've written to the Guardian Weekend magazine to make my feelings clear.

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