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I love the internet.

Thinking I wanted some weird mp3s on this hot night when I can’t sleep I figured I’d do the obvious thing and type “weird mp3s” into google which took me to this page which promised “seriously weird mp3s”. So I downloaded them - they’re kinda weird in a deranged Nyman-esque sort of way. Kinda like found photos. So I follow the URL down to check out the guy who’s posted them and he has photos online. Again, not expecting much I clicked and at first glance wasn’t overly impressed, until I realised those things called “compositions” were created “ by taking pictures throughout the house looking downwards (using wide angle, and keeping my feet out of the way) which generates an overal picture as if you had cut the roof of a building“. Check this out, and this. And the doors and windows. Stunning!

Think it might be cool enough to sleep. Time to move over to the sofa.

Night night!

Jesus, Lord! (via blort)

Lynda’s London - quite chuffed with this find because it’s the sort of amateur writing about obscure stuff that I think everyone should dabble in. Lynda accompanies her husband as he drives a freezer van around London at night and records the stuff she sees. There’s something quite niave about her writing which can get a little bit annoying at times, but the whole effect is really nice because it’s just her with no pretentions to journalism or reportage. See what you think.

I haven’t noticed people online mentioning how arseingly hot it is at the moment, but it is. Very arseingly hot indeed. It was quite pleasant at the weekend but today you could cut the air with a knife and chew on it. Especially in the concrete jungle of the City. It’ll be over in a few days, and I’m not complaining about the weather, honest, but it is definitely arseingly, cuntingly, penisingly hot.

Found an article from the Guardian a month back about wildlife in cities - here’s why we’re all seeing foxes all the time: “apparently there are 25 foxes per square mile in London, compared with just seven per square mile in the countryside.

So there you go. And, as Dave said in the comments,

why is it that city folk don’t feel the need to ride around on motorbikes with packs of dogs chasing foxes and watching them being ripped to shreds? i’m amazed that these innocent country ’sports’ have never become popular amongst the urban population, surely foxes being the dangerous hunters that the countryside alliance would have us believe they are, would be as much of a menace in the city? no doubt more scare stories regarding child eating foxes are only a headline grabbing day away.

strange how as the countryside is cleared of our natural species (foxes, badgers etc) those who have chosen to live in the artificial built environment of the city scape have become the guardians or our natural wildlife heritage.

Urban Foxes - a useful guide to our new friends. They eat mice, rats and pigeons, you know. They rock.

Meg’s right, Soap Bubble is a terribly addictive little game…

On Monday’s the Guardian has a Media supplement which is basically full of jobs in the meedja plus a few articles about the meedja for meedja types. Which explains why I know more about what’s on television than people who actually have televisions, unlike myself (although there is one at Rob and Anna’s place, which’ll be interesting, but that’s for another day). In the back few pages is the New Media section which was launched at the height of the dot.com boom to chronicle how all these millionaires would make their millions. Now it’s the polar opposite of the chummy, positive Online supplement on Thursdays (IT and Tech jobs), the former being full of moans about file sharing and lack of advertising revenues and how this internet thing isn’t really any good after all. They have a wee spot called “My New Media” where someone within the industry talks about what websites they visit and what they think makes a good or bad site. In the past it’s been dot.com-types slagging off the amateurs and talking shite but of late there’s been some more relevant people in the spot. Even so, I was surprised to see Tom of PlasticBag answering the questions today, especially since he’s been reluctantly leading the campaign against their Best British Blog award. His email debate with them about it is even up on the site now. Watch out, Tom. They’re trying to assimilate you!

There are a few books around about the reality of the wage-slave society. Andypop’s just read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and lifted a couple of choice quotes from it. I have a lot of ideas about this subject and one day hope to get them down online.

Walking up from the Millenium Bridge to St Paul’s at about 6.30pm this evening I saw a fox. There were suits walking around on mobiles and there it was, oblivious to all around it just mooching. It just seemed so ordinary and yet foxes don’t normally come out in the day.

I’m always amazed at how small foxes are. I’ve seen a few city foxes during my nocturnal walks around Birmingham and always mistake them for big cats or small dogs. Foxes, in my mind, are huge, muscular sleek things, more like wolves. In reality they’re more like oversized rodents (in the best possible sense).

I have somewhere to live. In a couple of weeks I’ll be living with Anna and Rob in Southwark (prn. Sutherk) near Waterloo station. It’s in zone 1, takes 20 minutes to walk to work and I’ll never need a monthly travelcard again. This means I’ll be in a weblog household (Rob has one too but doesn’t update that often) filled with comics fans. We’re looking at getting a WiFi broadband LAN set up, which is dead cool and geeky. The flat is nice and quiet with a balcony-thing and did I mention it’s in walking distance to everything in the city? When I walked back today it took ten minutes to get to Tate Modern. Moving date is August 11th. I’m quite looking forward to this!

news.bbc.co.uk can now be accessed as a UK edition or a World edition. The articles are the same but the layout and prominence is different. Interestingly, I find the World edition more appealing. Maybe because there’s less subtle advertising for BBC broadcasting guff and sub-tabloid rubbish hidden on it. From now on I shall be a world reader!

238 CDs and not one of any worth. If this sells, I’ll shoot myself.

Slightly altered the about page to account for recent, ahem, developments. And added a silly picture.

Achoo queen contest “Many womens are tickled them nose by Kleenex, and sneeze. Please enjoy!”

At Helen’s leaving do, Brett took an incredible 75 photos. This one was taken just as someone else was taking a shot and I like it a lot. Accidental photography is amazing!

Moving out is looking frighteningly easy. Kate’s staying in the flat for 6 months so I can leave some stuff here if need be, like the bed (which is mine), a comics-chum has agreed to look after the small press comics library for a bit, which will free up some space, and I’ve got two distinct possibles of rooms to move into within the next couple of weeks. Should have a definite answer on the first choice tomorrow.

Thanks to the people who emailed recently offering sympathy. A recurring theme was that I’m probably putting on a brave face online and hiding the pain. Truth is, while it has been difficult and emotionally weird at times, we’re both a lot happier as a result. I certainly feel like a weight has been lifted. I think we’re both going to come out of this much better and stronger people and still remain friends once enough time has elapsed.

There are two reasons why I haven’t talked about it online. The first is that I didn’t want to drag Kate into this public forum when she has no control or say over how I portray her. The second is that I actually managed to talk it out with friends over the first few days and got to the stage where I didn’t really feel the need to talk about it any more. Hence no need to unburden myself online.

Photo down the side is from Helen’s leaving drinks last weekend. This was shortly after I put my credit card behind the bar and shortly before I forgot everything that followed.

So, it seems everyone at work has read or is reading this weblog. I’m not weirded out by it at all. Just promise me one thing - when I start to tell an “amusing” story in the staff room, let me know if you’ve read about it already.

It’s a funny thing. I remember when none of my friends, bar maybe 3 or 4, had email let alone home net access. Now everybody does. How wonderfully liberating.

Blogroots is a MetaFilter style community blog with the remit of weblogs. I’m not sure whether this is a great thing or something that’s just going in circles, but it’ll be worth keeping tabs on. Should it ever take off and become wildly popular, you’d be advised to sign up now to avoid MeFi-style agony.

What is the origin of the phrase It’s all gone a bit hatstand? Nothing on google. Pear-shaped I can grasp, but what’s the hatstand all about?

Reasons I like being a bookseller number 3752198 in a series. I work with this guy who writes stuff like this.

Photos from the notorious Subgenius night. None of me as far I can can tell. Which is probably for the best.

Another weblog for your perusal. I accidentally saw Dickon Edwards‘ band Fosca a year or so back and his work has occasionally stumbled into my life a few times since. His blog is interesting because he actually does seem to live this foppish new-romo thing completely and with total honesty. It’s like he’s genuinely superficial in a deep way. I know a few people like this and I can never get my head around why I don’t hate them. ;)

The animated gif in on this page is one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in quite a while.

As a post-script to why awards don’t matter, I have it on good authority that the short list for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award was achieved by the scientific basis of if a book has a crap cover it ain’t going in. And there’s a lot of eating and drinking involved in the judging process. Not much reading it seems.

Remember, they’re more scared of you than you are of them.

Good Julie Burchill today on the subject of my favourite newspaper…

What is the Daily Hell scared of? How long have you got? On one day last week, you could have chosen from the abortion pill, gay rights police, dogs, white people having black babies, taxes, single mothers, career women, exams, teachers, doctors, taxi drivers, unions, drugs, compensation, Big Brother, HRT, sugar, vitamin pills, foreign beer and girls who go on holiday to Greece and drink too much (though in Daily Hellville half a shandy is probably “too much” for a woman).

Another good piece in today’s Grauniad: an interview with Tony Benn on his sell out tour.

Then he lists five questions we should ask any powerful person: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?”

RuPaul’s weblog is quite interesting in the context of how weblogs can cut through the media bullshit and allow person to person communication. It seems that RuPaul went through something of a personal revelation change thing last year and decided to use a weblog to talk about it directly. What’s interesting is the usual means for a celebrity to do this is to have an autobiography, usually ghost written, published around Christmas time with carefully constructed revelations about their life. These books tend to be the purest form of “product” that appears in yer local bookshop resembling tabloid magazines and with the same shelf life. What’s sad is sometimes you get the feeling these B-list celebrities really want to reveal their true selves to an audience that just knows them as smiley TV people or soap characters, but they can’t because the book is still part of the great spectacle. RuPaul seems to be revelling in the freedom from this badness, and if proof were needed that he’s on the right track, EvHead saw him on the magic lantern box recently: “Just saw Rupaul on the Late Late Show. He mentioned his “weblog,” tried to explain what it was and told about his today’s post (all-time favorite male porn stars). Craig wasn’t interested.” Of course “Craig” (whoever he is) wasn’t interested. It’s not part of the big spectacle so it doesn’t matter. No wonder RuPaul’s enjoying it so much.