Websites you'll probably never need to visit 001
The first of a new series on phil.com. I'll start you off with MoorMan's - The Energy Efficiency Experts of Animal Agriculture.
Watch this space.
02.04.06 @ 04:07 PM PDT [link]
Cazza's nan
In-tents experience: gran hopes to catch sight of Caz at Glastonbury. Here's her granddaughter pictured at the end of 2005 with Michael Silverman, who's now chilling in New Zealand
When my friend Caz last went to Glastonbury, her nan was so keen to spot her on the telly that she sat through hours of footage. Bless, eh?
The headline acts? Super Furry Granimals and Oldplay.
02.04.06 @ 04:21 AM PDT [link]
Give that girl a namecheck
A girl who served me in a cafe today had a enamel name badge that announced her as Vicktoria (sic). I was wondering whether this was a typo that was too expensive to correct and she just had to put up with it. Or is it just a trendy spelling of an age-old name?
02.02.06 @ 03:53 PM PDT [link]
Strange escalator coincidence
You don't often see people trip on tube escalators, but I saw two people - a man and a woman - fall forwards on separate staircases at Waterloo station within two minutes of each other today.
Who says there's nothing in astrology?
02.02.06 @ 03:51 PM PDT [link]
Great spam header
I am sick of paying sky high costs for your curatives. That is why I choose this outlet.
I know the feeling. The cost of curatives these days, eh? Terrible.
02.02.06 @ 03:45 AM PDT [link]
Unusual spam of the day
This is confidential data. If you are not Cordell Voss and have received this message in error, please do not access Cordell Voss's account.
Emory Piper, Account Rep. bif987
I would just like to confirm that I am NOT Cordell Voss. As far as I know.
02.02.06 @ 12:02 AM PDT [link]
Paul Young's crashed my nano
Disaster. My ipod nano has crashed, 13 seconds into the Paul Young classic "Wherever I lay my hat (that's my home)".
I was listening to it as I arrived at aikido tonight and tried to turn my machine off. Nothing happened. It then became obvious that none of the functions were working at all.
I can't get back to the menu. If I go forward to the next track, it starts playing Paul Young again.
I'm in a permanent temporal loop, except unlike that copper who's gone back to 1973 on the telly, I've gone back to 1983.
02.01.06 @ 02:56 PM PDT [link]
Before I forget...
Lady in Tesco this morning. Different types of fancy mushroom - oyster and chestnut. Packet of Winalot. Greek-style yoghurt. And a copy of the Daily Telegraph.
02.01.06 @ 02:49 AM PDT [link]
Jack's Back
The clock is ticking towards the fifth season of 24 with Kiefer Sutherland. Sky One have a big poster campaign and the tension is mounting. Not sure I can really cope with renegade CTU agent Jack Bauer on a Sunday night, followed by time-travelling British DCI Sam Tyler on a Monday. Let's hope I don't get confused between the two shows.
Jack Bauer in a coma and driving a brown Ford Cortina. It doesn't bear thinking about.
01.31.06 @ 04:22 PM PDT [link]
Don't you just long for summer?
Forget the Costa Brava and all that pallaver: Phil soaks up the sun on the south coast.
6th August last year. The British seaside. The phrase 'nuff said' comes to mind.
01.31.06 @ 04:13 PM PDT [link]
Nourkin and Cheryl Baker
Have you seen those ads for a hair loss product called Nourkin? They feature Cheryl Baker as a celebrity endorsement. She is described as - and I quote verbatim - "TV presenter and formerly of Bucks Fizz fame".
It's not quite like having Tiger Woods on board, is it?
Cheryl is 50 and admits to being troubled by thinning hair until she found Nourkin. I'm 37 and would admit to the same thing privately. But probably not on a tube poster.
Another person who's 50, I discovered today, is the lead singer of the Bay City Rollers (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,,1698716,00.html)
01.31.06 @ 03:57 PM PDT [link]
Service to tourists
I was walking down the South Bank tonight and a young Japanese couple asked me to take their photo. I happily obliged and they posed on the floodlit embankment near the London Eye and I made sure that I got Big Ben in the background.
But it's a strange phenomenon, don't you think? Handing your expensive digital camera over to a complete stranger. I know I had a suit on and looked very respectable. But what's to stop me chucking it in the Thames or doing a runner with it?
I was a little annoyed because they asked me to take a second snap for luck. That was pushing it a bit.
01.31.06 @ 03:49 PM PDT [link]
Interesting time travel site
Following my discussions of the BBC programme Life on Mars, I think it's only fair that I trawl the web for a few of the best time travel sites. We'll start with http://www.timetravelfund.com/, as there's a great concept behind it. You invest a bit of money now and, over the course of many years, it grows into a large pot. Enough, in fact, to convince a kind-hearted person of the future (who's developed suitable technology) to whisk you out of the present and into the year 2290 or something similar. Apparently these temporal abductions might happen just before you were going to peg it.
There's only one slight logical flaw to this argument that I can see. If you are living in 2290 and there's a sizeable fund for rescuing people from the past, you'd already have done it, wouldn't you? So people would be disappearing to the future as we speak. Except they're not. The only time travel is backwards to 1973. But don't get me started on that one again.
01.30.06 @ 03:20 PM PDT [link]
Time travel show just gets weirder
It was a rough night for fans of time travel romp, Life on Mars. Just to recap, our hero Sam Tyler has jumped into 1973 following an accident. We're led to believe he's in a coma and is therefore merely hallucinating about bent coppers in Ford Cortinas taking backhanders from dodgy local gangsters. Trouble is, it all seems frighteningly real. Bungs are the order of the day and certain local villains are untouchable because they're regularly slipping the old bill a few quid and organising nights out with dancing girls.
When I say it all looks frighteningly real, I have to introduce a note of caution. Sam did bump into Marc Bolan in a club and warned him to be careful driver. He also chatted up his mum. Sam's mum, that is. Not Marc Bolan's. (Sam can't tell Mrs Tyler that he's called Tyler too, as it would raise questions about the integrity of the timeline and maybe even the fabric of the space-time continuum, so he announces himself as Chief Inspector Bolan after his hero from T-Rex. Don't worry. You'd understand if you'd seen it, but it's really not that important.) Anyway, Mrs Tyler is living in fear of the chief gangster's heavies, who are kicking up a fuss about the rent. Sam's younger self - who'd just love to meet a real-life policeman - is upstairs in bed with a case of pre-MMR mumps. You get the impression that if the virally-compromised Sam Junior actually met the chronologically-challenged Sam Senior, there might be a big puff of smoke, like when matter meets anti-matter.
Sam's journey is obviously very strongly influenced by another time travelling adventure - that of Dr Sam Beckett in the ever-popular NBC show Quantum Leap. Beckett, played by Scott Bakula, "woke to find himself in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own". The poor b****rd was always trying to get home. It took him about five seasons, if I remember rightly. I think there's about four more episodes of Life on Mars.
01.30.06 @ 03:11 PM PDT [link]
That Saddam Trial
What is it with all this shouting at the judge and everything? If you were up for speeding in the UK and you raised your voice at the magistrate, my hunch is that you'd be escorted to the cells until you calmed down. It's called contempt of court. If, on the other hand, you're a former Iraqi despot with genocidal proclivities, it appears you can do whatever the hell you like.
You can't help feeling they may have had the right idea with Ceaucescu in Romania. I seem to remember that his trial lasted about two hours. It certainly cut down on the legal fees.
01.29.06 @ 03:45 PM PDT [link]