There is a term used to describe the point in time that exists for hacks and exploits before they are first identified or publicised outside the group of users that created and use them: zero day. Zero days exist at the moment of creation and purity; the moment when their sole purpose is defined by the intention of the creator rather than the observer. The smallest of sub cultures before the moment either dissipates or gains some level of integration into the homogeneity of general consciousness. In my more romantic moments I imagine an ethereal spirit of zero days overseeing discoveries and realisations, shunted aside as they gain traction.

A zero day is a pin prick of existence from which a myriad of possibilities radiate outwards from, some never occurring, several occurring at once and many mingling and interfering with one another to create waveforms of existence and reality that are unimaginable to the instigators of the original event and often wholly unpredictable to anyone. A bit like life in general. For instance: dynamite. Tri Nitro Toluene (and it may be sad that I can still remember the structure) was created by a chemist called Nobel who became very rich from his invention. He also didn’t want to be remembered for this and created an award in his name to reward the brightest and best in their particular fields. For a long time they acted to establish Nobel’s name with altruism, human advancement and achievement. However the Nobel Peace Prize has long since become a political award, given to embarrass establishments, reward token efforts in fashionable pursuits and generally trading on its reputation to highlight causes rather than pacifists. And so it is that Barack Obama comes to be awarded it for rhetoric about nuclear disarmament at the same time as pursuing a hawkish policy in Afghanistan. Something that will cause death. Something he may come to be inextricably linked to. And thus Nobel is once again associated with death.

As an aside, there is a movement afoot to have Barack Obama named as (American) College Football’s best player through a rigged write in vote. As I understand it the voting makes it impossible for him to win, but he is certainly going to place as a result. Brought to you by the same people who made Rick Astley the best performer of all time at MTV and in the fine tradition of Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf winning People’s sexiest people way back when.

On science and endings; Planetary 27 finally came out. As much as I think the Authority is the absolute pinnacle of super hero comics, as much as Transmetropolitan forever changed my world view, as much as Fell and Doktor Sleepless thrill and upset me, Planetary is Ellis’ greatest work. A century of pulp fiction and quantum and relativistic physics forced through the explorer hero archetype and distilled into some of the best comics ever made. And 27 reinforces the underlying themes of the series and provides a fitting conclusion with emotional heart while remaining utterly true to the characters and concept. If any other fiction moves me as much this year I will be amazed.

South Park came back. Not quite like the comet but probably like a swift kick in the unmentionables to popular culture. Really genuinely funny, but actually creepy with it. I can’t think of anything in the first half of the series I enjoyed as much.

I started an evening class in Book keeping. I thought the teacher was an absolute moron. I ended an evening class in book keeping. My other course continues apace. And, by apace, I mean at as fast as I can possibly manage.

I won an award at work for the month. Got a load of tat. Enjoyed the sentiment. Found out that we may all be working limited hours as a result of the postal strike. Changed the criteria by which I am looking for a new job.

Apparently, as soon as the US government acknowledged there was a recession, consumer confidence there dropped measurably. In this country companies are going bust left, right and centre. These are the end times.

Apart from they’re not: Barack Obama gets sworn in inside a month and, at some point, the economy will cease contracting. One thing that cheered me up more than it should is a list of billionaires who have lost significant quantities of their paper fortunes to the global recession. Paper fortunes could be the key words here, with the whole thing brought about my 63 trillion dollars that never existed vanishing. Part of me feels that a similar sized contraction has to occur, but the whole recession is about confidence and perceived worth rather than anything more tangible.

Comics wise I have no idea how the year has been. Both Marvel and DC are doing huge crossovers and steeping their books in inter-connectivity and continuity. This doesn’t interest me and a lack of time and money means I haven’t been following them as I may have otherwise.

Films-wise it hasn’t been spectacular and, again, time and funds have conspired to make sure I didn’t venture to the cinema often. The Day the Earth Stood Still is a mixed bag of a film with great sequences and large swathes that just don’t work. The Dark Knight is very good indeed, but is less good when you actually ruminate on it. What else was there?
Tropic Thunder isn’t as funny as one would hope.
Jumper was a special effect stretched into a movie.
Wanted was wrecked by being utterly stupid.
Iron Man wasn’t bad, actually.
Speed Racer looks fantastic but it is aimed at kids and not for adult consumption.
Indiana Jones 4 is the continued rape of childhood by George Lucas.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is really funny, and quite brave for a mainstream sex comedy.
Righteous Kill is singularly disappointing but doesn’t allow Pacino to be as awful as normal.
The Hulk is ok, but pales in comparison to other superhero films this year.
Get Smart isn’t funny and is too obvious.
The Love Guru I seem to be the only person alive who likes.
Wall-E is brilliant, daring and beautiful.
Hancock has the beginning of a much better film and a fairly awful ending around a standard middle.
Hellboy 2 is visually great, but the tension seems missing.
How to lose friends and alienate people is good for 20 minutes. Then an insipid romantic comedy.
Quantum of Solace is like a tacked on sequel to the previous James Bond film without being a James Bond film. Some of the action sequences are a bit shaky, but I actually prefer it to Casino Royale.
Zack and Miri make a porno isn’t very funny.

Still, to 2009 and all the promise I will bemoan squandering in 12 months’ time.

Work is one continuous stream of hair dryers, fans that would sell if only there were two hot days threaded together, kettles and dealing with people who tell you how much they’re worth and then pay you with the copper from down their sofas. I spent three days dealing with Nigerians trying to sell fans and, after conversing with one repeatedly, got a firm order for 32 of them. Fantastic, now if only I could sell the other 2 thousand or so . . .

I don’t want anyone to spoil the Dark Knight for me. I shall ignore more and more people until I get to see it for myself, finally escaping my self imposed coccoon of interaction deprivation.

Gordon Brown. He’s like John Major without the defining catastrophic failure of policy and leadership and without the open civil war within his party. But make no mistake, he is as unpopular, as reactionary and as clueless.

I don’t come here for a while and it is overgrown with the weeds of spam. Clarkkent wants to show me fake breasts. A woman in India thinks I have a great site. And no one says one real thing or one genuine thought.

Barack Obama. His funding has slowed but he really is running a good campaign. McCain has occassional moments of lucidity but I get the feeling his nurses don’t wake him from his afternoon naps often enough.

David Davis I have belatedly decided I like. I agree with him on something he feels strongly about. And he seems genuinely principled.

Michael Turner died. I was surprised and then discovered I didn’t really care.

Hellboy 2 is very good, but loses steam towards the end. Wall-E is probably a great technical achievement but I got really bored and gave up. Hancock is better than I thought but loses it’s way after the first half.

It’s been a long year. I went from working in a factory and selling stuff to annoying market traders to being an ex pat to being a market trader. Spain was hot but hard to adjust to and moved at a snail’s pace. Market traders pleaded poverty and tried to squeeze prices. The general public asked idiot questions and promised to come back to make purchases and I never saw them again.

Manchester United will probably be second as the new year is rung in. Arsenal finally achieved their potential the year I stopped believing they would. Chelsea imploded. And Liverpool continued to be utterly unlikeable.

The comics mainstream became navel gazing and all about intricacies of continuity I can’t be bothered with. Non-superhero comics were actually very good. Doktor Sleepless is a little over-familiar thus far but like hanging out with a friend and dancing to music you already know. It’s not ground breaking but it’s fun in a way you can predict beforehand. The Mouse Guard was incredibly well executed and charming although I can’t be part of the intended demographic. The Nightly News was bloody superb. The Highwaymen was fun and cut down way too soon and Fables was consistently excellent.

South Park had a run of sub-standard episodes. It’s not the beginning of the end, but it was disappointing.

I don’t even know anything about popular music anymore. I’m ten years off the pace and take pride in it. I don’t know if things are really as quantifiably worse as I think they are (that sounds incredibly clumsy) or I just lost interest the second or third time I saw the tricks they are the latest iteration of.

Films-wise I thought it was a pretty good year. 300 was violent and stupid and wonderful fun. Hot Fuzz was spectacularly funny and layered. Oceans 13 was a return to form and enjoyable. There was the dense and rewarding climax to the Pirates trilogy. Tranformers wasn’t as awful as I expected. Shoot Em Up was also violent and gloriously stupid. I didn’t bother seeing Bourne, having hated the second one. Zodiac was overlong. The Simpsons was as bad as I feared and had reviews from another film entirely. Die Hard 4.0 was the least of an already fatally wounded franchise.

And Gordon Brown went from a man of integrity to incompetent hack in less time than it takes to change a lightbulb.

Whenever I haven’t posted in a while (which I haven’t) I find that I forget the vast bulk of what I intended to post about.

Accommodation in Wolverhampton is neither cheap nor plentiful. I believe this to be down to a number of factors:
- The university is obviously successful considering the size of the town it is situated in
- The proximity of Birmingham makes it a desirable commuter location
- The influx of economic migrants means that cheap accommodation is snapped up by them

Currently residing in a ground floor flat about a half mile from the city centre, in the quest to find a place some seriously dilapidated hovels were looked at, including a house in Wednesbury that should be raised to the ground and then stamped and urinated on. Liberally.

Menzies Campbell has resigned, upon seeing the news piece I thought he had died of old age. But the question would have to have been how anyone could tell.

Gordon Brown was out manoeuvred by David Cameron and is now in free fall in the polls. When you sell yourself on integrity and being boring but steady, being unsteady and an obvious conman will do that to you. The only problem is I don’t want a single one of them running the country at the moment.

Apparently a new report says obesity is not the fault of the very fat people suffering from it. This actually makes me very angry. Of course it is their fault. And the fact they will now have yet another reason to claim it isn’t makes me want to kill. Or poison chocolate bars.

There was some girl on the local news last night complaining that the NHS wont pay for an extended stay for her in the Priory to overcome an eating disorder. Why on Earth was it paying for any stay for her at all?

DC has released their new comic lists for January. In which they continue to stripmine everything Alan Moore ever looked at, they belatedly realise that John Byrne should be inked by Mark Farmer (been saying that one for years) and they ruin the Grant Morrison run on Batman by saddling him with a resurrected Ras Al Ghul (how on Earth is that spelt?) from an obviously editorially driven crossover. How they continue to manage to drive me from their comics is a source of annoyed surprise to me. Sometimes it requires a great deal of hard work and innovation on their parts.

The Heartbreak Kid starring Ben Stiller is quite funny. It suffers in comparison (which is inevitable) to There’s Something About Mary but the characters are actually more rounded. I think there is less physical humour and Ben Stiller is a less sympathetic character this time out.

Knocked Up is surprisingly good, although the tone is inconsistent and the ending is exactly what you would predict from the start of the film. It is made by the same people as the 40 Year Old Virgin and has some of the same cast making an appearance.

Shoot Em Up is brilliant. I disagree with any negative review, as the film is inventive, very high energy and knowingly ludicrous.

There is a glut of Oscar intended films at the moment, and some that look a little more fun. I doubt I will get to see many in the coming weeks due to the hours I am doing at work, but some do look interesting.

Alberto Gonzales has resigned. I can´t help but feel that this is a death knell for the current Conservative grip on American politics. Bush wont be able to get someone else so utterly wrong through again, and the Democrats should spank him mightily. Add in Karl Rove having gone and suddenly the Republicans look in utter disarray. This is not, however, to say that the Democrats are in ascendancy. They are notoriously bad at capitalising and their potential presidential front runners make me shudder.

I keep hearing Phil Collin´s desecration of “Another Day In Paradise.” I know it is awful. I know I should be replsed by it. But somehow it doesn´t seem quite so bad anymore. I know not whether I have grown old and mellowed or the standard of music is now so bad that past travesties are no longer so absolutely awful in light of new lows.

I also heard Ace of Base´s “The Sign” and Blondie´s “Atomic” today. Ace of Base always makes me think of being 13 and also of Petra. These things are not connected.

Dan Dare is being resurrected by Virgin Comics. I have decided that the only thing left for comics to do, as they seemingly eat their young and gaze ever more intently at their navels, is Zombie Pirates versus Vampire Ninjas. I expect my royalties forthwith.

Currently I am in the process of trying to learn Spanish. Learnt one to a hundred, got a few dictionaries and pore over magazine and newspaper articles, deciphering them slowly. For whatever reason I have always been better at written communication than spoken. Partially the language seems so fast, partially the accent subtly different from my references and partially I am nothing like a natrual mimic. However, I recommend learning the following phrases if planning to travel to Spain:

“No, it only looks like I am staring at your wife. Whilst drooling.”
“I have a glass eye and would not even consider staring at your daughter.”
“However did you guess I am English speaking from my red skin and strange dress sense?”
“No, I don´t want to go to an Irish themed pub.” (Actually, that can usually be said in English.)
“I would like one of those small semi-baguettes rather than a large bag I am forced to buy due to my inability to communicate this to you.”
“I am not a drunken thug, this is just my acent.”

Spanish magazines and the press cost next to nothing. The English speaking press cost an absolute fortune. Marvel Spotlight retails for 6 Euros an issue. The Sunday Times is five.

We may have one of the cherry contracts formerly operated by Inox. This is, unreservedly, very good news for us.

Gordon Brown appears to now have a fairly unassailable lead over David Cameron. I have no idea how slick little Tory boy has managed to drop the ball quite as badly as he has. It´s silly season, he could issue a press release every couple of days and keep the government on the back foot. Instead he seems to be oscillating between traditional Tory and very, very odd.

The Sunday Times had a piece on Madeline McGann´s parents being monstered by the Portugese press and the internet. As part of a forum on the cutting edge of the monstering I feel no shame. And maybe pride.

Mike Weiringo has died. He had the misfortune to never actually draw something I really wanted to read and, whilst an attractive artist, never struck me as excellent. He was, however, clearly a very nice man and technically incompetent. It has caused ripples in the Super Hero community in a way that Mike Parobeck and Seth Fisher´s passing never seemed to.

There is a girl who made the news the other day overdosing on Espresso. I passed a link to Wayne and he dismissively called her a rank amateur.

The IT Crowd starts again on the 24th. It is the only television that I can imagine myself regretting missing. Ah well, Channel 4 were very good about providing the series online last time round.

Tottenham may be in the process of getting rid of their manager and failing spectacularly this season. This will please my father immensely as it will have my grandad spnning in his grave.

What I wanted to say, passionately, and entirely forgot about was:
My staff are musical plankton. They have “Loaded” by Primal Scream play and talk over it, yet turn the radio up for Boyzone. They turn off “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones and turn the radio to Heart FM. They leave Jo Whiley’s mopy Emo morning to run on Radio 1 and don’t recognise the genius of “Son of a Preacher Man.” They make me despair.

Warren Ellis has been announced as the next writer of Astonishing X-Men. Which will probably be the high water mark of the franchise post-Morrison. He will be joined by Simone Biachi and he has already promised to rape people’s childhoods. He has a few comics out this week (Crechy, Doktor Sleepless and Black Summer) which I have been unable to procure as yet.

All Star Batman came out and actually addressed some of the plot holes in the run so far, while ignoring others. It’s becoming an utter car crash of a series, but looks great. I knew there was the potential for it to be bad after DK2, but the sheer scale of the mess and the clear lack of courage on the part of DC editorial is breathtaking.

I read “The Thin Man” last night. I can help but feel, so far from the era that spawned it, it isn’t really that good. Characters are largely cyphers and the dialogue isn’t as snappy due to its very influence. It’s like coming to Citizen Kane late and accepting all the innovation as rote.

I saw the Beowulf trailer. The special effects look shiny and unfinished and there is a distinct lack of scale and threat. I shall almost certainly see it, but I don’t see it working.

We arrived in Spain this morning; the ground looks different from England from the air. Where England is green Spain is orange; iron bars coloured by blowtorches and left mottled. The landscape has beautiful sea and mountains and sands that stretch miles. The weather is hot without humidity, and what little breeze there is is mainly greatly appreciated. Unfortunately we stand out as British and this hinders us; we may have to go and buy clothes as camoflague.

There are American marines on shore leave; they are marching around despite supposedly being off duty. I don´t like them, but I don´t think they are going to be violent or cause trouble. They just seem even more ignorant than the rest of us. To the locals it is probably like asking what kind of algae they prefer; none at all will always be preferable.

Last night I stayed at Adrian´s. His wife snores, no matter how much she denies it. He made steak for tea and we watched Hot Fuzz, which continues to reward on repeated upon repeated viewing. Every little throw away moment has a pay off. Everything is in for a reason. I don´t know if I have ever seen a film so tightly scripted and densely created.

Real Madrid has won the Spanish league. The cars have only just stopped papping their horns and the locals are enjoying themselves. Personally I would have prefered Barcelona, but I feel kinship with Northerners who don´t particularly like the occupants of their supposed capital.

Tomorrow we have a busy day. I rather fancy the idea of getting all our work done as early in the day as possible (before it gets too hot) and then knowing we can slack off in the heat or just enjoy ourselves and relax for the rest of the day. We could get the bulk of our business done quickly and then spend the rest of our time enjoying the country.

The new Fables incorporates Arthurian legend. Personally I am unsure how I feel about it. I am always annoyed when Excalibur is depicted as the sword in the stone and I don´t know how much I think of the Knights of the Round Table as a bunch of fairy tales.

This keyboard is hard to type on. I can´t find half the characters as it is Spanish. Which is my excuse for any mistakes I have made on this post.

Armand Van Helden has a new album out. It sounds like a lots of eighties dance with no drops. No glitches, no dirty beats. At first it was a shock, and an unwelcome one. But it is a grower. Some of the songs I now love. However, I do prefer his glitchier, dirtier and more droptastic songs. Which the BBC apparently wants to deny exist, failing to mention albums from his discography as mood suits them.

I have discovered Yazoo Yogo Summer Berry drink. It tastes like my mother’s raspberry cheesecake. This is a very good thing. I had to track it down in its natural habitat and snare it in a huge net, but the effort has been worth it.

As I walk to (and occasionally from) the gym I pass a basketball court and football pitch. On the scrub land between them and the pavement grows two different kinds of poppies. This being on the edge of All Saints I am unsure if it is being used to cultivate heroin crops or they have declared an armistice I am unaware of.

Luther Arkwright is a very dense comic which contrives to have the end of royal dynasties and governance across Europe happen at once for some reason which wholly escapes me. In places it is beautifully drawn, and the sheer literacy of it is to be lauded. But it is bloody hard going and I am left with an overall lack of care for the characters (although rounded and developed) and plot (although detailed and meticulous) such as I have no desire to ever read it again. Or suggest to anyone else that they should.

Pirates 3 on Thursday. It shall, of course, be one of the best two sequels this summer. The other will be Ocean’s 13. Spider-Man is for emos and Shrek 3 is for people who get off on intellectual slumming.

What I thought of “Soon I Will Be Invincible.”

I will no longer be stealing sweets off children . . .

Apparently Gordon Brown has the Labour leadership so stitched up he wont have any challengers for the post. Nothing like democracy.

Jose Mourinho has apparently been charged with obstructing the police (when they couldn’t get him on anything else), it is about the only thing that could make me like him more.

I have a bulk email asking me if I need Xanax. I don’t know what Xanax is and don’t really feel curious enough to Google it. But without knowing what it is, I don’t know if I need it. I feel I am getting along fine without it, though.

Davod gave me a book called “Soon I will be Invincible” which I have been reading. It’s an uncorrected proof, so I don’t know if that makes it a review copy or not. It has a disclaimer about not quoting from it on the back and is too affectionate of what it hopes to cast a mature light upon. But it is well written, even if the characters’ voices are that bit too similar.

Spider-Man 3: It’s ok action scenes, the occasional half-way decent joke and way too much melodrama. It will, of course, make a fortune. It will never be considered a great film, or even a particularly good example of its type. It was, however, preceded by trailers for Ocean’s 13 (It looks like a return to form!), Shrek 3 (It has the good music from Kill Bill Volume 1 in it!) and Pirates 3 (If it is half as good as the second one, and it really should be, it will be the huge film of the year).

How is Coke Zero different from Diet Coke?
I picked diet coke today because I preferred the bottle design.

It’s raining heavily in bursts. Volume of water so great it sounds like being under a waterfall punctuated by hearing each drop in a staccato beat that hits four times, misses and then repeats. Rain you have to accept you will get wet in but just hope you escape unbruised.

The BBC has an article on tests administered to prospective Chinese University students and existing English University students. The one for existing English students I can do. And it is on trigonometry. I hated trigonometry at school and it was the portion of my maths GCSE that I failed. It’s shockingly simple.

I am adopting a siege mentality to the phones. I have had incessant (and thoroughly stupid) phone calls all morning. One in particular stands out. This is someone who asked me how much stock he could load onto a container. I told him the rough quantity in terms of pallets and supplied him several sample pallet listings so he could get a feel for how pallets varied massively in terms of quantity. He has repeatedly asked me how much stock he could get on a container and I have repeatedly directed him to the emails, each time more exasperatingly imaptient. He finally asked me how many units and I told him it was an idiot question and gave him an example where the quantity could vary by a factor of 8. If he calls again I may just take to openly calling him “moron.” Wayne would.

Someone I sacked for costing the company (so, myself and Adrian) thousands and being dangerously incompetent rang me to ask for a reference yesterday. She stated she should get a good one. I resisted the urge to laugh openly at her and told her to get her prospective employers to give us a call or write to us. Seeing as she can’t remember the name of our company anyway, I may not get the chance to write the most negative and comprehensive explanation of why hiring a single person can send your company to the wall in the history of mankind. I can but hope.

Astronomers have discovered a planet they believe may be Earth like. It’s a massive distance so any colonisation would mean stasis of some kind or a crew that understands they are not coming back. And some way of recycling oxygen (algae). And probably masses of honeybees. And a huge food supply. And, and, and.

Manchester United won against Milan last night, but I can’t help but think that conceding two goals have done for them in Europe. I hope I am wrong, but it will take several players coming back healthy for me to stop worrying. And even then I will still have my doubts.

The new Doctor Who series is actually not bad. Cheesy, oddly inappropriate choiral music, not frightening and building on past missteps in the franchise, but massively enjoyable. Nothing that made me cringe for too long and nothing I am ashamed to say I managed to watch the entirety of.

Doktor Sleepless looks like it will be interesting new noise. The Nightly News is just wrapping up and excellent. DMZ (from a quick sampling) is not particularly groundbreaking or savage and the mainstream (such as it is) looks stangnant and on the great exodus inwards. It’s time to find new comics or to make them.

Prince William has split with thingy. You know, whatserface. The local newspaper has hoardings with the word split in inverted commas. I don’t know why, am I the only one who is unaware what this is code for?
Has she been butchered by the Queen’s doctor to prevent her giving birth to a two headed jackal outside wedlock?

Last weekend I stayed at my parents’ for Easter. Getting back here was awful. I am sure that shedloads of railway staff take time off on days I want to travel. I am not, however, sure if this is common or I just happen to be unlucky. I also read an excellent opinion piece in the Times about how inefficient and singularly ineffective the rail system in this country now is.

The latest South Park is a 300 riff with added lesbianism. It is not, however, very good. Shocking without being especially funny, the previous week’s Easter special was far better. And much, much more insane.

It’s Grand National Weekend. And FA Cup Semi Final Weekend. I actually can’t muster up any interest in either.

Apparently DC now has the Wonder Woman relaunch back on track. While I do wonder if this is response to their absolutely abysmal sales recently, I can’t muster up any enthusiasm. I feel they have burned a lot of fans on this one and I am cutting my losses (judging from the sales so are a great many other people). One note of interest is Gail Simone saying she loves Wonder Woman’s character. I wasn’t aware she had one, she seems a high concept drifting between stupid gimmicks and people ditching parts of her basic setup at whim. I have a couple of years’ worth of the comic and no better grasp of what she would do in any given situation now than I did before reading them. It just shows how little DC actually develop their marquee characters.

The new issue of Batman seems to be getting rocky reviews. I can’t really see why. It’s Morrison doing what he did on X-Men: taking the character’s tropes and slightly spinning them for a new audience. Kubert is not a great artist by any stretch but the story is enjoyable and does what it set out to. For Morrison doing superlative work you look to All Star Superman, where I think his confidence in his artist’s abilities and freer rein allows him to do magical, timeless things.

The new issue of Fables is, sadly, the worst to date. Not bad by any stretch, but massively inconsequential. It doesn’t feel even vaguely necessary.

The new issue of Daredevil is extremely solid. Lark seems to have added dynamic perspective to his usual raft of tricks and you have interesting and dramatic posing and angles coupled with his very realistic feeling use of shadow. Bruebaker knows where to let it shine, but I do feel that it is an excellent first chapter of something that will end up being slightly underwhelming.

The new episode of Doctor Who is actually very good. It mixes the mundane with the absurd and incredible very well and there is one of those moments which is actually exciting. And the cast actually seem to be hamming it up and loving it in just the right way. Having seen none of the last series I was very pleasantly surprised.

I had to sack someone on Friday and felt no remorse and no vindication, it was a purely business decision and it felt slightly odd to sit there with a sense of detachment. I just said what had to be said and did not offer any apologies or seek to explain this was punishment for past indiscretion and gross incompetence. I may have finally arrived at the adult notion of proportional response.

300 is not what I expected. It is not finely crafted, considered and stirringly epic. it is viscreal, raw and unashamedly macho. It’s the hack and slash of sword and sandal films. It’s also brilliant and I love it.

The new South Park is fun. Xenophobic in a world cup football kind of way, funny in a lowest common denominator way, and seemingly parodies Team America and 24.

Terry Marshall-Rogers has died. He was an obvious influence on Todd MacFarlane and a good Batman artist. He also was not prolific and does not leave much of a mark on the medium, but his death affected me. And I am not sure why.

This site is now the target of Spam bots, I have had about 53 comments (spam) in the last couple of days. I really need to read up on ways of getting around that.

My hair has looked awful all day, I have no idea why.

http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=36;t=006029 leads to a plethora of ideas. A life sized Ken doll (of Barbie fame) struck by the mutant sperm of the Village People on that magazine advert (the one that helpfully points out that they are not the real Village People, in case endorsement by the real deal would somehow be misleading) deciding to fight crime. Unfortunately the work is licensed and probably intended for mass market consumption. How on Earth does one do a character called Captain Action seriously?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/02/donkey_shocker/ beggars belief. There is nothing I can say about it other than to draw attention to it.

I am reading a book on the 2004 American Presidential Election campaigns. I think it overstates the professionalism of the GOP campaign, but it ably demonstrates how bad the Democratic one was. It also shows what the Democrats should be doing to position themselves as the natural party of government in America. And it is actually very simple.

Apparently Gordon Brown’s reign as Labour party leader will coincide with attacking David Cameron as being privileged and having attended public school. It’s the right thing to do and it is the wrong thing to do. It can be used as supporting evidence in an attack, but it can’t be the attack in itself. The attack has to be that David Cameron is out of touch and doesn’t understand people’s concerns. Then they trot out the public school as a supporting facet of this.

McCain has officially entered the 2008 race. A Republican worth voting for. Oddly enough, I think his moment has probably passed.

I am at my parents’ for the weekend. I have fixed their back door (it was sticking and my mother was having trouble locking it), have got my comics and am hopefully seeing Hot Fuzz again tomorrow.

Comics-wise it is not a vintage month. Everything good is Warren Ellis and/or Image published. Marvel and DC are both going increasingly to their base and doing massive super hero crossovers that are continuity heavy. I couldn’t even pick up most of the books and understand them, and without patting yourself on the back or caring about some obscure character, there is nothing to recommend in them. It’s a bit like when Marvel bought Heroes World and I had no desire to read anything. I love the medium, but I don’t want to see it eating its own young.

Coming home on the train yesterday I heard a girl loudly talking about her religious beliefs and go on and on about them at length. I like to think the bloke sitting at her table who got off at Stockport fled because of her, but that could just be me transposing my reaction onto him. I hate people who wear their faith as a badge, as if it somehow makes them automatically better.

The new version of WordPress has a redesigned and utterly lovely entry creation screen. It also has a very attractive log on page. The latter detail should not matter but somehow it really does.

According to the BBC, smoking is actually very similar to drug use. It makes me wonder what the average journalist actually thinks smoking is, and if they have ever heard of nicotine.

The N73 is the odd bit of technology that doesn’t actually becoming irritating with use. At the moment I could recommend it to anyone without compunction. I love it.

I had just written a paragraph of a post and my browser decided it didn’t like me and would stop responding. So a musing on people stealing metal to weigh in is lost to the ages.

What is happening to the world when people don’t know the lyrics to YMCA by the Village People?
I weep for the generation coming through and the death of popular culture.

Warren Ellis (and damn everyone who didn’t read Nextwave for not reading it) apparently believes that Hilary Clinton is looking at making a run for American President in 2008. I honestly don’t want to believe it, but with Mark Warner apparently not running (which I also have a hard time believing, but the spectre of Gary Hart runs through my head flinging semen at the Mid-West) there is precious little in the way of real competition. The Democrat conference could be an old fashioned blood bath this time around.

There are lots of details of family members it turns out I have no idea of. Having once really put my foot in my mouth by not realising that my gran was a would be faith healer it now also turns out her brother was a kleptomaniac and that they didn’t originate from Bradford but from mining village on the border of South Yorkshire. If I had paid more attention growing up life would have been more entertaining.