*Expletive Deleted*

Still in the Guardian, I’ve had to laugh at the “let’s see how many times we can say ‘fuck” piece regarding the decision of various newspapers to quote fully Alastair Campbell’s diary, saying

I want to expose David Kelly in order to “fuck Andrew Gilligan”.

Of course, the Daily Mail chose to use ‘****’ instead, although I notice that on Sunday they were quite happy to use “Paki” as part of their headline (now there’s a shock – hypocrisy at the Mail).

However, the piece that made me laugh the most was (I hope) unintentional. The paragraph explained the Financial Times’ first use of “fuck” on the front page, explaining

“The Bush team’s strategy reflects the closeness of a campaign that the latest polls show as a statistical dead heat. They call it their DIFU strategy – Don’t Fuck It Up.”

I sincerely hope that the Bush administration didn’t call it DIFU, and actually called it DFIU. But I don’t know.

In a sort-of-linked way, I’d also like to say that I think the Sun’s incredibly offensive, insulting and bigoted ‘headline’ about Frank Bruno having to be changed is fantastic. The initial headline would have been a disgrace to The Sport, let alone to anything regarding itself as a newspaper – I’m not going to even give it the credit of webspace, or a link. Every time I think that piece of suppurating shit rag can’t get any worse, they prove me wrong. Long may their readership fall.

Taking the Piss

In comparison to the post below, the Guardian also has a piece on the deterioration of the UK sewer system. The infrastructure is generally reckoned to be at (pardon the image) bursting point already, with little or no investment in improving the current system.

This is one of the areas where privatising the water companies has been at fault – the companies haven’t invested in the systems, because it won’t show a profit to the shareholders. That’s blinkered thinking, based primarily on the “safety’s important, greed is good, but profits and dividends overtake all else” concept that seems to have fuelled a huge number of companies since the 80s. Personally, I can’t see those self-same shareholders being overly impressed when their gardens are covered in shit raw sewage, nor when their expected dividends fail to appear because the water companies are all suddenly having to deal with immense sewage bursts, and have to spend the money all at once in order to ensure that there aren’t outbreaks of rat infestation, typhoid and cholera (to name but a few) because of the fallout from the sewage bursts.

Baby Boom

I can all too easily imagine Green Fairy (nice site redesign, by the way) either frothing at the mouth, or simply despairing (more than normal) of the Tories saying that more babies are the key to solving the looming pensions crisis and to helping economic growth over the next 50 years. I’m not quite sure of the maths involved, being neither a mathematician nor a fuckwit politician, but I can’t quite get the theory to add up.

Of course, on a cynical basis, it has got the Tory party back into the news. I’m sure the Daily fascist Mail will approve of the plan.

Geeky Ego

I wonder, is it sad to be rather smug and chuffed when I’ve managed to get something working on the first go? Especially when it’s something that other people in the department have been working on for a month, and failing to be even slightly successful?

The sad thing is, it’s not even rocket-science stuff. Simply getting stuff on a webpage to appear/disappear at the click of a link – and they hadn’t been able to do it. I despair. Anyway, it’s done, worked first time, and yes, I’m feeling slightly smug and ner-ne-ner-ner, but also pleased that I can still get things to work properly.

Here endeth the session of own-trumpet blowing.

Who needs sleep?

Sometimes I wish I could have an out-of-body experience while sleeping, if only so I could see the position in which I sleep. Also, on days like today, it would be useful to know what sleeping position I’d used that’s making my entire left shoulder feel like someone dislocated it in the night, poured sand into the socket, then relocated the joint.

In short, it’s very very fucking sore. And I’ve no idea why, other than a nagging suspicion that when I finally got to sleep last night, it was with my left arm in a strange and potentially uncomfortable position. Any other information would be mere speculation.

The Festering Season™ starts early

I’d attempted to erase forgotten this from yesterday, but while I was out, I saw that Marks and Spencer have already started displaying their stocks of Festive Festering wrapping paper and so on. Their website has a section on preparing for the festering season. It’s not even bastard October. I could cry.

Decision

For those of you who still haven’t altered your bookmarks and blogrolls, I’m just going to say here (and probably remind on Friday) that I’ve made the decision that the original domain for d4d™, destruction for dummies, is NOT going to be renewed, and so it will be dying as of sometime around Saturday. Of course, because it’s on EasySpace they’ll probably take a few days to take it offline, but I just wanted to point out that at that time the original domain will be dead, deceased, and no more. Which, as a final convincing factor for me, will also immediately halve my daily spam count.