Shank

Geddit? It sounds a bit rude, doesn't it?

As a vegetarian it's a little hard to think of anything meanigful to relate about shank. It makes me think more of:

The Shawshank Redemption
Longshanks, Strider's nickname in the Lord of the Rings.

Given Strider is already a nickname, the fact that he in turn had a nickname is silly. But you can't really say that it was Aragorn's nickname. Multiple identities can give you a massive headache.

Speaking of which, I was both entertained and appalled by the news that US agents are adopting multiple online personalities in order to promote American interests on facebook, Twitter and, for all I know, the Doctor Who Fan Forum. Not appalled because it's so wrong - it's especially revealing in moral terms that they aren't allowed to do this in English for fear of US lawsuits - but because I've done it myself.

Many years ago I was engaged in an online argument. I was losing. Not on rational grounds, I believed, but simply because there were more people with the opposite view on the site than agreed with me.

So I cheated. I created, basically, a sock puppet who sided with me. To make it more convincing, my sock puppet didn't entirely agree with me, but backed up the core arguments. At one point I was even arguing with myself. Eventually, with two people onside, the tide of debate turned. It became more acceptable for other voices to agree with me. I won.

This victory was so massively important to me that I cannot now remember what the fuck it was about.

So I can hardly blame the US military for stooping to this tactic when I once used it myself. In the end, the second online persona became so dominant over my original online identify that it took over completely and eventually got its own website. I scare myself sometimes.

S

PS: Apparently the sock puppets are specifically not targeting Facebook and twitter. Don't panic.

Gigahertz

I'm not much of one for radio, apart from a few teenage years spent listening to the cricket coverage from around the world under a blanket. I don't know why I was under a blanket, it was 7 o'clock at night and they were playing the West Indies. I must have been hiding from someone.

My roommate in my first year at University loved radio. He loved it so much that he turned it on while I was still asleep. Despite this, when he finally moved out he accused me of forcing him out. I'm still, to this day, trying to work out what I could possibly have done that was worse that switching the radio on while someone else in the room is still asleep. Fucking weird. Maybe I unleashed a horde of killer pixies that devoured all his favourite family pets. I don't remember doing that, but I was pretty drunk a lot of the time.

I went for a time with no TV, and radio suddenly became a lot more important to me. When I worked in Cardiff between 1997 and 1998 the wireless was my entertainer, and the only place to turn for news, drama and music.

God, I was bored.

On the other hand, a radio show is my favourite thing in the entire universe: the BBC Lord of the Rings radio series, an adaptation so good that it's almost possible to suggest that it surpasses its source material. After all, the Lord of the Rings, while magnificent, is not a contender for the best book ever written. Most popular, perhaps. Not best. The BBC LOTR, on the other hand, must be one of the finest bits of radio drama ever committed to tape. If you've never heard it, seek it out.

Bolshevik

I simultaneously have a problem with authority and a dislike of confrontation. This, as you can imagine, leads me into a spaghetti junction of contradictions as a person, and is probably the core reason why - every now and again - this blog turns into a rant. I don't like ranting to the people I ought to be ranting to, so it all comes out here.

For this, I apologise. If anyone actually read this, I'd apologise doubly, perhaps while wearing some sort of punitive vegetable on my head.

But is it too much to ask that our authority figures not be complete morons? Skimming lightly over a Government so shallow that it makes policy based on TV documentaries, why do so many of us get stuck with senior colleagues with no management or leadership skills, whose main job is to lead and manage. Did the people who in turn appointed them get their idea of the world by watching the henchmen of evil villains on old TV shows?

"What I really need is a right-hand man who is so monumentally dim that they will never challenge my authority, but will - through their fucking massive incompetence - inadvertently scupper every plan I ever have to rule the world or, possibly, catch that pigeon."

Yes. That must be it. There's probably an ILM course about it.

This is all very well if you're a fictional character who must be clever enough to hatch plausible stabs at planetary domination, but can't actually ever succeed. If you're running a medium sized organisation I'm less clear of exactly what benefit you derive from giving out top jobs to the mentally enfeebled or those so far up their own bottoms you could use them as a bowling ball. How do we think Fred Goodwin happened? He must have started somewhere, like Ebola.

I count myself stupendously lucky that I couldn't possibly say any of these things about my actual colleagues. They are universally spiffing. Oh yes.

Annunciation

The Arch-Angel Gabriel is not on hand to help me with this, but I'm going to try predicting the future.

• The new "There's Nothing Like Australia" adverts will result in a fall in the number of tourists, as potential travellers decide that Butlin's looks more appetising.
  
• England will put in some great performances in Cricket World Cup, but will lose in the semi-finals after Captain Andrew Strauss loses his belly button in a freak fielding accident
• David Cameron will be privatised to help pay down the national debt. He will be sold at below market rate, and some of his suits will be immediately sold off to boost his share price.
  
• I will drink one bottle of Irn Bru too many and turn orange at a comically inconvenient moment
• George Osborne will have all his policies reversed by the competition commission, since "being a rapacious cunt" puts him in direct competition with 87% of the private sector.
• Lady GaGa will attend the VMAs in a dress made of frog spawn
• The British Summer will be the oddest since records began. The previous oddest was 1986 when Michael Parkinson kept pulling an enigmatic expression every time the sun came out.
• Currant Buns will, due to a slightly misreading, be re-designated as Retro Buns
• The Daily Mail will announce that tables give you cancer.
  
• Tottenham Hotspur will demolish the Houses of Parliament to build a new stadium, but will offer to build a small parliament in Crystal Palace to preserve the required democratic legacy.
• Mexico will declare war on Richard Hammond, unless he agrees to eat his own hair wrapped in a burrito.
  
• A record 3% of the British people will notice that Rhodri Morgan is no longer First Minister of Wales
• In a shock result, 13% of votes in the local Government elections will go to cheese sandwiches, giving cheddar lunches the balance of power in a number of key local authorities
• Speedy will stop typing this list in about 4 seco
  

Collagen

Nizorel have now removed animal collagen from their shampoo. I thought you might like to know that.

That made me wonder a little more about collagen, and its use in cosmetic procedures. One website informed me:

"Several types of Collagen fillers are on the market. For example, collagen fillers containing human collagen include CosmoDerm and Cosmoplast. Cow (bovine) collagen fillers include Zyderm and Zyplast. ArteFill is a hybrid gel filler consisting of millions of synthetic microspheres (polymethylmethacrylate or PMMA) suspended in purified bovine (cow) collagen."

Synthetic microspheres suspended in purified bovine collagen, eh? And who is donating the human collagen? Apparently there aren't lines of plump skinned toddlers being marched down to the Pfeizer HQ to alleviate their parents' poverty through skin juice removal; scientists can make their own human collagen. Though if they do that is it really human collagen? It's never been in a human. It might be the same stuff, but there's a sense of ownership implied here. It would be like calling an apple OS compatible computer a Mac. It isn't, even if it's identical in all serious respects? It's nothing more than a human-compatible rip-off.

Humans clearly need a patent. I'm human. Do I get any money every time someone makes some human collagen? Everytime someone spends £100 on getting some quorn-style human juice pumped into their forehead, a proportion of the fee ought to be hived off, dividing by 6,000,000,000 and shared out amongst everyone around the world. Except Rupert Murdoch, a man who clearly has no collagen, and is only just human.

Charlatanry

I'm quite a lucky fellow. Not in the sense that particularly marvellous things happen to me. More in the sense that not too many bad things happen - and I think I'd take that any day.

One particular way in which I've been fortunate is that I've never been seriously exploited by anyone I trusted. Of course, when it comes to it this could be down to the fact that I don't have any friends and don't trust anyone, but statistics are statistics and I've not been taken to the cleaners by a mate. Except that time that one of them showed me to the local launderette when I couldn't find it.

The fact that calling the absence of bad luck does not really equate with good luck has occured to me, but I'm in a positive mood so don't spoil it. And the other day I was out to dinner with some old compadres from my University Students Union, and was reminiscing about the particularly loathsome behaviour of a former Social Secretary, who went out with a mutual friend, borrowed her life savings for a "business idea" and promptly disappeared. Hopefully wherever he goes this story follows him around and fucks his life up - if Michael Henchard couldn't escape his past, neither should this little toad.

That was a bit serious. When I first got given charlatanry I nearly wrote about early 1990s music. But that would have been a terrible joke, and as you know I wouldn't dream of making one of those.

Substance (wayleave)

I am caught in the horrible situation of wondering whether any of these random words have ever cropped up before. It's not that easy. But as I start to type about "substance", I realise that I have! Back in the mists of time I've had this one before. So what do I do?

One swaps of course.

WAYLEAVE

This what happens when you counter your fear of getting another repeat word by selecting "uncommon" on the Random Word generator. Uncommon? I think that might be a little understating the case when it comes to "wayleave". Still wayleave is finding a way through this tricky situation and out into the clear, so I should be grateful. God knows what I'll get if I select "obscure", though. Oh well, got to take a look.

Unprayerfulness. Is that more obscure than wayleave? Don't answer that.