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22/08/05 Websense Upgrade. Remember: Just Say No, Kids! 22/02/05 Normal Service is Resumed, here on 2G2L, because, once again, The Man is fucking with The Internet, and I do not approve. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4283231.stm Iran is now jailing and torturing people for running blogs. Especially ones that condemn the jailing and torturing of bloggers. So they'll really hate this: http://committeetoprotectbloggers.blogspot.com/2005/01/committee-to-protect-bloggers_20.html Always a sucker for a faintly doomed Internet Activist Campaign, I fully support this motion. FREE ARASH SIGARCHI AND MOJTABA SAMINEJAD 25/01/05 A Very Moroccan Birthday In rural Morocco, in the High Atlas mountains live a poor, rural people called the Berber (or Amazigh). Most Amazigh do not know how old they are, as they are generally not told when they were born and keeping track of one's age is considered unimportant. I imagine that, when scraping a hungry living in the mountains, sending your sons into cities where Berber culture is barely recognised after years of Arab oppression, so they can earn enough money to send home to allow the family to eat, when only the women are left behind to do the farming work, when the nearest hospital is 10 hours away, how old you are really isn't as important as what you have and what you are capable of doing. As I bitched and moaned about having to work until about 11pm last night, tired and hungry, I had one of those surreal moments. Sat there in an empty tube carriage, walking through an almost empty Waterloo station, watching the station clock tick closer and closer to midnight, I wondered to myself what exactly it was I was counting down to. What was the big event? The first person to wish me Happy Birthday was the taxi driver, just as the glowing digits of the orange clock flicked over to 00:00. At that point, all I wanted for my birthday was to get home to my family and my bed. Tiredness can do strange things to the way one's mind works, so my train of thought took me to the High Atlas mountains to a place where birthdays just don't exist, and I started to think about what I have and what I'm capable of doing. I decided I have a lot of very good friends, and wonderful family and that I don't take enough time to do some things that I'm more than capable of doing. Like saying Thank you to all of you. For the balloons that I woke up this morning to see, for the early morning phone calls and the singing of traditional birthday melodies to the accompaniment of coffee slurping noises and voicemail messages and emails. For the fun and laughter that we've had and are about to have. And for the beers you buggers are going to buy me on Thursday evening! "Thank you, you lot!"I'm having a very Happy Birthday. 18/01/05 Invalid Input Detected Why do I do it to myself? I clicked on this link, sent in email by a colleague Must keep telling myself "It's only a letters page. It's not real." 13/01/05 Last night I sat on the sofa and watched some, er, Fox Kids, I think. I watched the tail end of some Ulysses 31 and some Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors. Being an old bastard, I thought "they don't make 'em like that anymore". Then came the adverts for the other, new stuff they were going to show. Power Rangers Dino-something-or-other. Same tired old stuff, new merchandise to flog, BORING! Then I saw it. Imagine you're the guy pitching this to Fox: "Set in the futuristic Shuggazoom City, an all-new animated sci-fi adventure, centers on a self-conscious, resourceful 13-year-old boy named Chiro whose destiny is to become the person he always wanted to be – brave fighter, bold leader and great hero… all with the help of five futuristic simians, known as Super Robot Monkeys." Then came the name of the series and the logo. "Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!" Someone, somewhere, Got It. -- Unfortunately for Dell, the bloke they sent out to Get It as well, only got as far as Aldi's and came back with a cheap one that didn't work. Oh Dear. 16/12/04 Well, we have seen our enemy driven before us, mostly due to the lamentations of his women. But now that Davey Boy Blunkett has been replaced by Big Time Charlie Clarke, will we finally start to see some sense from the Home Office? Will I finally be able to stop with all the ranting? According to this BBC article the answer is "no". Charles Clarke, at least, doesn't think "civil liberties" is a dirty phrase that polite people do not utter, unlike the deposed despot. However, he is a supporter of the ID Card scheme (not surprising, since it's Blair's Baby now, and he kind of wants to keep his job) and, unfortunately, I fear he'll consider it his duty to push it through "for David". So, then. A salute for the fallen David Blunkett. You were a worthy adversary. Shame you had such shit taste in women. Hahahahahaha. Mysterious ways, indeed. 14/12/04 Everyone needs to read this article posted by Alex See how well the effort to provide basic amenities in Iraq is going, and feel a warm glow, this winter. Because they sure as hell aren't. 15/11/04 It's not necessarily that well known that I'm something of a sports nut and really enjoy Cricket. Unless you've been living in a cave (or America) you'll have heard all about the England tour to Zimbabwe saga. For those not up to date with current events, it works like this: Robert Mugabe is evil tyrant dictator who is destroying his country in the name of racial spite and is quite possibly clinically insane. Due to this, we kick Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth, pending, oh, I don't know, The fucking JLA descending from the skies to sort it the fuck out. Suffice it to say, politically, we're not best mates. So, thankyou I.C.C. for arranging a fucking cricket tour to Zimbabwe for us, threatening us with crippling fines or expulsion if we refuse to go. Move forward a few months: a dispute arises within Zimbabwean cricket resulting in the entire team being sacked. Eventually the I.C.C. suspend Zimbawe's Test Match commitments on the grouds that (and I'm serious) the kids that Zimbabwe have now built their cricket team out of couldn't handle a Test Series and it was unfair on them. Now, the I.C.C. say "Oh but if the British Government says "don't go" then you can forget the tour and all will be well." Tony Blair says "well, I can't speak from an official point of view (yes you can, you're the fucking Prime Minister) but personally I don't think they should go." Various players who don't want to go to Zimbabwe are "rested" by the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) but captain Michael Vaughan is forced to go. Being an utter gentleman, he, of course, insists it was his decision to go, his choice. So we have an England "B" team going to Zimbabwe to play their "C" team and Robert Mugabe is loving the fact that the I.C.C are forcing England to dance to his tune. Skip forward to yesterday. about 48 hours before the first game against Zimbabwe, England were due to fly out to Harare. Mugabe's government decides to ban all British Press who have said nasty things about him in the past. The I.C.C say "Well, we'd probably understand if England pulled out now" MAKE A DECISION, IDIOTS! The Sports Minister says "By Jove, it's just not on, I shall spout meaningless syllables in a really ticked off fashion." MAKE A DECISION, ARSEHOLE! Finally the ECB grow a spine and say "Fine, if we can't have a media presence sufficient to make it worth our while, fuck your bloody series, we're not coming." The I.C.C. say "Actually we've finally decided, if you pull out we'll have to punish you for failing to honour commitments, but don't worry, we probably won't fine you." Miraculously, Mugabe's cronies "find the missing paperwork" and allow 13 more British journalists into the country. England fly out to Harare today to play the first game tomorrow. Like a fucking yo-yo on the end of a string being tugged by Robert Mugabe, who is laughing like a schoolboy at having the UK as his new toy, given to him by the I.C.C and the British Government not having the spine to intervene. Apparently we have to go back next year to play a series of 5 day games. 18/11/04 27/10/04 11/10/04 It's all the fault of technology magazines, you see, that are aimed at men, not women. Poor women, they only have umpteen bazillion magazines on the shelves to tell them which 35,345 surefire sex hairstyles they can choose from THIS autumn and which makeup to use to smooth over the facial blemishes you got from trying last months diet tips. No, apparently because we men get gadget magazines which have pictures of bikini-clad women on the front and are full of useful tips on how we can spend a year's salary on car "enhancements" so we can pretend to be James Bond (only with a better stereo than old JB ever had, I mean check this bass tube, and look! 400 CD's, man, I can listen to this thing for a WEEK STRAIGHT! No I don't do any shopping!) Because we have a small number of mags like that, women are turned off from technology. Oh, the companies get some blame, too, for not marketing the product to women. This is, in my opinion, absolute bollocks of the first order of testicular magnitude. King Kong would consider himself to have diminuitive danglies by comparison.
The reason for this bold statement, is, in fact, The Blindingly Obvious.
But that premise just isn't true! Just like I'm not duped into thinking that, because the bloke on the razor adverts now has a sports car and a different chin-stroking woman, the newly coloured razor is worth forking out for, and that the shave will now suddenly be worth double the money for refills, women are not bloody stupid! Contrary to popular media belief women are not techno-dunces who only care if that iPod comes in pink, because white just won't go with the nail varnish! I don't know a single woman who is ever fazed by techno jargon or put off by it. Nor have I ever met a man who had to have a gadget just because the numbers were larger than his current one. Apparently, women are more interested in what a gizmo can do for them and how useful it is to them. Well fuck me backwards with a sideways saveloy! If only I'd stopped to think about how much extra music I could get on that new MP3 player so that we could take some favourite albums in the car/tent with us before I upgraded to it and not been so obsessed by the fact that it had more Megabytes, I'd have... oh. I did. That's why I bought it. And I still have a penis. How did that happen? Nobody buys technology for the sake of it. For one thing it costs a fair chunk of disposable income. Women: would you buy a new Mobile Phone if it was dinky, handbag sized, had a choice of personalisable fascia's and buttons that were specially designed to be kind to long nails if it had 30mins battery life and room for 2 text messages and 3 contacts? You'd look at the tech specs to see if it was crap, even if you'd shortlisted first on useful features. Would you be put off the product because the brochure said Li-Polymer 3.6V on it? Of course not! Ah, but, according to these people, you'd never ever know about the product because you don't want to pick up a copy of BoyzToyz monthly with a close-up of a pair of tits on the front, which is probably a fair point, and, as usual, it's all the fault of the men, wanting our gadgets with our tits and our cars.
This kind of argument assumes that us men own technology and that we have to somehow learn to accomodate the ladies and learn to share.
The crux of the argument is that it's the men's fault that women can't pick up a gadget magazine aimed at women, or that the advert for the big new Land Rover is rather masculine, when, you know, women drive 4x4's too! Seriously! Obviously I only ever want a product because the advert is masculine enough and speaks to my inner Y chromosome.
Simple solution to all this: Quit fucking whining about how unrepresented your fucking gender is as if it's a stick to beat the men (and every intelligent, capable woman) with in the Battle Of The Sexes, and start actually representing! I mean represent something else apart from the stereotype of helpless, technologically inferior sex who need the men to do it all for you.
Apparently because, despite the editors of these magazines being women, it is, as usual, All My Fault. 05/11/03 You know what to do, everyone. Fax your MP Double points if (s)he is a Tory. Triple points if he's Michael Howard. 30/04/03 In Liverpool Homesick for a clock And the boy in the belfry I'll be the girl who sings for my supper In Liverpool Except for the boy in the belfry In Liverpool |
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