:: And the rain it raineth every day ::

So much to say, so little time.

The production of Twelfth Night came off well, bar having to cancel Saturday night mid-performance. The rain had become so torrential, that we and the audience could no longer hear. My Dad went home very wet after seeing me on stage for a mere 10 minutes. Fortunately most people who had come to that performance were able to take advantage of the free tickets we offered them for the following day. This meant that our final performance was in the sun, with a bumper audience of about 200.

The other :: Big News :: of the day is that I might well be set to direct a play in October. I'm still trying to arrange all this, but the present set-up is that I would be putting on Shakers by John Godber and Jane Thornton. It's all about 4 waitresses who work in a cocktail bar and the clientele attracted to their "classy joint". I'm very excited about the possibility of putting it on and will post more soon. In the meantime, I shall be using this Boring Journal Generator to fool you into believing that I still exist.

And where would I be without my usual blatant plagiarising? Here's a pun-tastic b3ta classic:

Before I love you and leave you, another random generator from those journal regurgitators. This one helps you produce whiny premenstrual songs which then go on to storm the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Which can only be a good thing, surely?

:: "Boots can sell them willy-nilly" ::

Ah, Popbitch, you seething nest of self-interested bitch-vipers.
The problem is, once in a while, the message board can throw up something new, amusing and unavailable elsewhere. Flicking through the usual round of web-based boredom-alleviation yesterday, I came across a link to a local newspaper article. It's very hard to tell whether there's an element of tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing, but how can they get away with the quote in the header? Not to mention the comment from the Boots spokeswoman:

"We consider the stock that we sell extremely carefully. This product is very discreetly packaged and it's extremely difficult to remove it from inside."

So, with that over, on to more violation of our childhood dreams, with this b3tan effort:

Feeling slightly flushed after posting that, I think you probably don't want to know about this act of wanton cannibalism, so I bring you a little light relief. Tied up with the play this week, I missed the must-see TV show of the week last night. Yes - one with posh-pants Victoria Aitken (daughter of disgraced former Tory MP) "rapping". Apparently she's set to become "the female Eminem". Somehow I doubt it.

More pre-weekend amusement in the form of an ananova quirkies special. It's all about some old dear who decided to take a packet of puff pastry on holiday to France. In her abandoned bag, the packet was thought to be a plastic explosive and was blown up. This could bring about a revolution in quick cooking methods:

CUE: Soothing flute/guitar/harp melody. Title sequence of smiling children in oversized chefs' outfits, baking in a swanky kitchen. Close up on a still life of flour, butter, eggs and vaguely erotic vegetables on a wooden worktop. Fade in titles: "How to boil water". Cut back to kitchen, now devoid of irritating brats

Delia sidles into shot and smirks ominously

- Hello. Today I'm going to show you a really quick and easy way to cook a whole chicken. This is a failproof method which provides fun for all the family.

Camera pans down to reveal items on the worktop: a chicken in a baking tin, half a lemon, some herbs, garlic cloves and a saucer of butter

- First you need to make a garlic and herb butter to baste the chicken

Delia chops a few herbs and some garlic, takes a fork and mashes them together with the butter. Then she slops the mixture over the chicken.

- Make sure you cover it well - you want the skin to go really crispy. Now, for extra flavour, put half a lemon inside the chicken [she shoves lemon up chicken's arse, lingering, as if enjoying the moment a little too much] It's time for my special secret ingredient, which really helps speed up the cooking process.

With a glint in her eye, Delia reaches under the counter and produces a hand grenade and bungs it up the same hole as the lemon, pin pointing out of the poor fowl's posterior

- Here, the timing is critical to achieve the best results.

Delia takes the chicken tray over to a chest-height oven and places it on the shelf. She briskly pulls out the hand-grenade pin and shuts the oven door, running to shelter behind a juicer

After the inevitable explosion, the screaming kids run back in and start to eat bits of exploded chicken off the walls. Delia approaches, her hair now in disarray, beaming beatifically.

- As you can see, it's quite an exhilirating cooking method, but the children love it! Join me next week to find out how to squash fruit with a sledgehammer

Well, a little lame I suppose, but never mind. I've always been a bit suspicious of Delia, though. She seems a bit goody-goody to be true... which is something that can't be said of my next victim. Another PB steal from today's board:

Iain Lee - a fate worse than death
I was introduced to the super idiotic Iain Lee recently, who appeared to have indulged in a spot of sunbedding/fake tanning in order to relieve himself of his pasty milk bottle tan. Unfortunately, the result was such a shock that all I could say was "Shit, you look like a Pepperami". Everyone laughed including him but he did so with a strained look and glaring eyes. He didn't speak to me again, funnily enough. Ah, well. It was worth it...
pussy_galore, 10:21 25/7

I laughed my merry arse off at that - the sooner that poor excuse for a breakfast show is hounded off the air the better.

That's it, I'm off to play for the pleasure of the people of Dulwich. As it's Friday night, and no work tomorrow, I expect we'll be having a few bevvies afterwards. On a park bench, swigging a bottle of this tramp-agne stuff:

:: Countdown to a Soaking ::

Things aren't looking great for tonight. It's the technical rehearsal for Twelfth Night and the intermittant showers are not encouraging. The office has excelled itself on the dullness front over the past two days - no flashing my crack at the watercooler...

My life was brightened up, however, by the fact that Lame Academy is set to (dis)grace our screens once more, or rather that the producers of the show could be in trouble:

move to highgate, save the world
seeing as endemol may have forgotten to get an ents licence for the fame academy house this time round. when they do apply, please feel free to turn up at the magistrates and appeal against one being granted.
leguape, 13:04 22/7

In :: Blog news ::, it's fantastic to see that Taxloss has updated his site at last - and also to note that Hypatia has moved in with him. Looks like we're one step closer to being one bloggy happy family. Quite how he manages to turn mundane office life into a sci-fi fantasy is beyond me, but maybe that's why he's virtually finished his novel and I haven't ever got beyond the first page...

It's the final week of Pet Food purgatory, so I should offer a final salvo of insane animal-related links. First up this week: Chairman Meow appears to be a ghost written ex-pat cat's view of Shanghai. I can't vouch for the sanity of the author, but it captivated me for a lunchbreak.

As I prepare to trudge about in a silly jester costume, a martyr to Shakespeare and the elements, my mind (and browser) is drawn to frivolity, pranks and those dumb Americans. I'd forgotten that in the US no-one bothers to check your signature for card transations. Here is proof that you can sign your receipt as Jesus and get away with it. Yay for the free market!

:: B3tans Sting Ananova? ::

A news-filled pic-fest for the final post of the week. I was astonished and amused to read a story posted on Ananova today. Goodness knows what furtive gremlins are at play, but I swear the polar-bear loving b3ta regulars have got something to do with it (click on pic for full story):

Not to be outdone, the Popbitchers have been on the News trail too. Here they give the real reason for Shevaun's reappearance in the UK. It might verge on the cruel side, but made me laugh (thanks to PB posters reverend_goatboy and hercules)...

The other big UK story today is the disappearance of the key witness in the sexed-up dossier débâcle. And the subsequent discovery of a body near his home... B3tan Manic has a perfectly plausible explanation for this. I'm inclines to agree with him:

And finally, just when you thought you pets were safe, I can exclusively reveal, that I'm still working on the ever-dull Pet Foods project. Never mind, nearly over now. Here's another insane pet care item from the States. As usual, didn't believe it was a serious product at first, but apparently it is. It comes with this slightly chilling epithet: Do you love your dog enough to make both of you happier?. Make of that what you will...

:: Hitting The Odd Bum Note ::

OK, so I'm having a bit of a BJ day. Bridget Jones that is, before you ask.
Woke up spluttering on the sofa at 6.30 to be greeted by smug-chops Natasha Kaplinski on BBC Breakfast. What the fuck has happened to that programme? At least it used to be vaguely reassuring and business-like in a Radio 4 Today Programme type way. Now they seem to have tried to sex up the format and go all informal. At least they haven't stooped as low as Channel 4's ever-execrable RI:SE with its trio of hilarious presenters: Iain "the least funny one off of the 11 o'clock show" Lee, Kate "er, I'm not thick, but" Lawler and Zora "my hypno-cleavage helps you concentrate on the news" Suleman.
So, unable to cope with this onslaught I toddled upstairs... and woke up an hour and a half later with barely minutes to spare to perform my ablutions. Mindful of the forecast downpours, I pulled on a slightly ancient and rather tight T-shirt and a hoodie over the top. Bowling along in the bus to the station, I realised the two-layer clothing strategy might not be the best. I sweated as I listened to the radio and due to the fortuitous lateness of the connecting train, got in earlier than expected. Bumped into colleague Dorset Diver walking from the tube to the office. She complimented me on my tan (courtesy of the Suffolk sunshine), and I retorted that it always looks more impressive in the drabness of an overcast day. The office appeared to lag a day behind on the climate front, and the oppressive humidity necessitated the removal of my hoodie... to reveal the slightly ancient and rather tight T-shirt. Hmmmph. Doing my best not look fazed, I sauntered to the water-cooler to grab a cup of refreshment. The subtle combination of aforementioned shirt and hip-slung jeans conspired to show off my builder's cleavage to most of the office as I leant over to fill my cup. Next thing I expected was Hugh Grant and Colin Firth to leap out of the stationery cupboard...

Still snowed under by Pet Foods (mixed metaphor? I'm not sure), I've found little comfort in the interweb today. The Popbitchers have been cooing about their little get-together last night, meaning the board is full of self-congratulation and bitching and devoid of witty and amusing sleb stings. Oh sorry! No change there then. The main consequence of this appears to be today's non-appearance of the (actually good) PB mailout. I've had to make do with silly pictures from the V Graham Norton site.

Is it just me, or is that show becoming a cross between a naughty Noel's House Party (an anagram of "up the loony arses") and That's Life?

:: Just pitch your tents over there... through the gate to the pool and tennis court ::

Turning up for what I thought might be a glorified barn dance on Saturday, I was surprised to hear the above on arrival at The Big Biffter. This was welcome news after a couple of hours in a sweaty car and in no time at all, we'd donned our swimming togs and jumped in. The event was a big success, with plenty of food and booze to go round. It was a slight shame that the latter half of the DJ line-up consisted solely of trance variants: Nu-Trance, Euphoric Trance, Bollox Trance, Progressive Trance etc etc. One type of this cheesy no-brain excuse for dance music was more than enough for the likes of me and Tigger, who bemoaned the conspicuous paucity of Hip-Hop. As a towny (who should certainly know better), I got caught out by the vagaries of the Suffolk climate and retired shivering in my t-shirt at 3.30am. My towel, hung out to dry after the pool session, was dew-sodden. It was just as well that the British Summer prevailed and provided another glorious sun-soaked day yesterday. Already half-baked in the tent by 9 o'clock, I tottered to the pool, to find like-minded individuals sunning themselves and taking a constitutional dip. Much of the day passed this way until Hertz car rentals of Victoria beckoned at 5pm. My intentions of unpacking, doing the washing and settling down to watch Six Feet Under were dashed when I fell asleep on the sofa before the Antiques Roadshow had even begun.

So, back to dreary pet foods. On the horizon however is the even more yawn-inducing Packaged Foods storechecks. I can't really explain what these are really, lest a sudden attack of narcolepsy strike, and I end up on the sharp end of the Boss' tongue. My day was brighted up by the arrival of this from one of the Biffter attendees - it appears to be a clip of ping pong à la Matrix. You'll see what I mean when you watch it... I should also mention this little gem from b3ta's latest compo (hover over pic for full explanation):

It's reminiscent of the Elvis Presley Dambusters Clock Plate of Tutankhamen from Viz's memorable tatalogue (what a shame they've now removed the Diana Princess of Wales Full English Breakfast Plate - a masterpiece of marketing).

:: Amaryllis! How are you getting home? Are you going to run? ::

Just a quickie from me today. No political rants, no protests against social injustice, no whinging about the parlous state of my love life. Web inanity pure and simple:

• Monsterland is a jolly place where you can create and play with you own little mutant cyborgs.
• Following the recent success and long overdue media attention of Nicey's biscuit reviews, others have been quick to man the juck food band-wagon. SnackSpot caters for all your snacking needs. All seems a bit geeky to me...

As promised, short and sweet. I'm off to a birthday bash in a barn in Suffolk. Time to get out my b3ta party blower:

PS header to today's post is a quote from last night's visit to the poshest pub in South London. Amaryllis was fine, but she had to dash back home at 11 to check that Chlamydia and Augustus had been tuckd up safe in bed by the nanny.

:: Blair Bitch Project ::

The cover of the latest Private Eye somewhat predictably lampoons Tony Blair's self-righteous assertions of his "integrity" (and the damage sustained to it by the BBC) during his defence of the dodgy dossier. Never mind the fact that much of the voting population find it increasingly difficult to credit the PM with a single shred of the straightforward decency this word implies. Particularly disheartening for me, as a linguist and pedant, is the debasement of our language a the hands of those aiming for maximum meadia impact. That Blair wishes to convince us of his steadfast belief in the War on Iraq is not in question, but this manufactured attempt at conviction is precisely the thing that makes me suspicious. We shouldn't forget that the Prime Minister is a past master of spin and opinion swaying - his training as a lawyer must have stood him in good stead before he hooked up with the likes of media-hound Alistair Campbell. Simon Hoggart's article in the Guardian analyses the PM's handling of his recent appearance before the liaison committee as seen through the eyes of an impressionist. I prefer the following reference to a different aspect of popular culture. Popbitch's Reverend Goatboy, is to blame for this, methinks...

Perhaps the only stalwart supporters of Phoney Tony are those folks from across the pond whom he was so eager to "help out". unless this piece of vomit inducement is a joke, he could be off to a winner. If only we could persuade him to emigrate - it's about time they had a new president.

Here's a happy note to leave on. A new survey claims file swappers buy more albums. At least this offers some kind of rebuttal to the blandly repeated maxim that unchecked music downloads are killing the music industry. As the article states, singles may well be on the way out (in their current form at least), but I can certainly confirm that many of my recent CD purchases have been as the result of being able to hear samples. Good independent outlets, such as tunes.co.uk have recognised the value of making tracks (or at least parts of them) available to potential customers. Successful enterprises such as this surely prove that the main motivation of the larger record labels in preventing file sharing is based on corporate greed, staid working practice and a lack of foresight. It hardly seems worth beginning to criticise the deplorable quality of the music churned out for an increasingly young audience. I recognise that the record industry has always survived on gimmickry (as epitomised by the charts), but the trend for huge financial outlay on acts with such ephemeral appeal must lead to a shake-up of music-moghuldom when even the 8 year-olds tire of "novelty". Bring back Sinitta!

:: Psycho Pets and Techno Babble ::

This Pet Food project is driving me insane - not so much because of the lacklustre subject matter, rather that the researchers have submitted their data in the wrong format. I seem to be spending more of my time correcting technical errors than checking Venezuelan wet dog food brands... My attention is drawn as usual to the subject matter of the current project. I wouldn't mind betting that I eat twice as many chocolate bars when we're researching Packaged Foods and I developed a hearty smoker's cough during Tobacco whilst attempting to sample more of the available market. Being petless, I haven't succumbed to the urge to buy Tiddles a new toy mouse or invest in some super-premium jazzed-up meaty-chunk-laden bisco-snacks for Woofbags. In fact I don't even like dogs. I agree with Jeremy Hardy that anti-turd byelaws ought to zhuzhed up a little. Any unfortunate victim of mid-pavement canine defecation syndrome should have the right to hunt down the mutt's owner and lay a bum cigar on their living room carpet. Most ridiculous of all is the current trend to humanise pets as much as possible. Not content with pet clothes (the japanese are suckers for this, apparently) manufacturers have now foisted flavoured water for dogs on the eager public. As if to make up for this over-pampering, Italian fisherman have reportedly been using kittens as bait to catch a particularly large species of catfish.

In :: TechnoNews ::, it has emerged that the government hasn't yet got to grips with security issues on shared documents. With the current media focus on government dossiers, these kinds of revelations could prove to be damaging. For once Microsoft's inbuilt inanities might have served us well - certain MSWord files formerly downloadable from government websites revealed the full chain of tamperers, editors and cobblers(-together). No wonder all government documents are now being published in harder to trace pdf format. For anyone with a hotmail account, the news of a Dutch spam-demon's demise will be met with a hearty cheer. Long have our inboxes been plagues with offers to enlarge your penis by at least two inches or advertising Britney in a compromising position with a pachyderm. Bestial congress aside, this must be a positive sign for beleaguered emailers worldwide. But there's still a long way to go before messages offering me debt consolidation stop landing on my virtual doormat. some messages about porn, however, are always welcome - such as the news that a former porn-star is running to become the next mayor of St Petersburg.

Flitting along the web's wide boulevards, it's always a pleasure to be distracted by multifarious offers and purchase opportunities. Some are perhaps not quite so useful as one might hope. Others carefully tread the line between plausibility and pikeyness.

No pix today. Tough shite.

:: R & R Required ::

So having got home last Saturday morning, I spent the whole day sorting out a new mobile/tracing numbers and then went to a house-cooling do (they were moving out on Monday). I left home at 9am on Sunday to see my Mum on her birthday and got back at 10pm before heading straight back to work on Monday. Since then I've tried to catch up on my work (petfoods is so interesting), been to 2 Twelfth Night rehearsals and acquired a streaming cold. No wonder I didn't feel up to going to bAsTaRd last night. It's the first time in at least 8 months that Tigger and I haven't gone. We shall be returning next month with a vengeance. Tonight, fortified by mega-decongestants from Boots, I'm heading for drinks with Popsicle and supper with La Gribouilleuse. I shall spend most of the rest of the weekend attending to the following domesticities:

• The kitchen is in a complete disarray as no-one appears to have done any washing up in my absence. Quelle surprise!
• My room is still somewhat disorganised - although I have unpacked my cases, their contents haven't necessarily found their homes on shelves and in cupboards. Mostly they adorn my floor.
• The garden has gone from being unkempt to overgrown since I went away. I must do some weeding to retrieve the spinach and runner beans.
• We need a new lightbulb in the lounge. I'm fed up with the improvised candlesticks solution. Attempting to learn my lines by candlelight is hardly "romantic".

There's probably more, but I can't be arsed to elaborate, so hears a rundown of the things I came across whilst trawling the interweb today, starting with the obligatory b3ta pic:

This reminds me of a late-night contest in CLAREification towers - college satirical rag - to coin new jokes along the same lines ("I went on holiday with my wife to Indonesia"|"Jakarta?"|"No, it was her choice" etc). My contribution was as follows:

- My wife's one on holiday to a tropical island.
- Seychelles?
- Shells.

Those were the days, eh? Maybe we need a talent contest to find a better joke-writer. How lucky I am, then, to have discovered this fount of self-promotion - is this indicative of web-democracy at its best, or a reflection of our taste for watching others make fools of themselves in the search for "fame"? Big Brother contestants beware - desperation is not a surefire means of obtaining long-term popularity.

It would appear that the charvers are on the loose again. After a pikey/carver hiatus of late, I think we might be in for a resurgence of councilness. How anyone can inflict the name Xyron on their child is beyond me.

I was concerned to read the following today on Popbitch:

So Barry from Eastenders is in the new Carry On film
It sounds awful .... "Carry On London will also feature Danniella Westbrook in a Barbara Windsor-style role. It is the 32nd film in the series of comedies and the first since Carry On Columbus in 1992. Graham Norton, Dale Winton and Burt Reynolds will also make appearances in the movie, set to start filming at Pinewood Studios next year. It tells the tale of a limousine firm hired to take celebs to The Herberts - the British equivalent of The Oscars."
chelseabun, 13:22 4/7

No, no, no, no, no! When will silly film producers understand that the much maligned Carry On genre retained its charm (until the mid seventies at least) by virtue of Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Hattie Jaques et al. Babs would do well to steer well clear of this misguided venture, which will surely end up as a faded anachronistic pastiche of the original format.

Another day, another rant. I've got to go, but before I do, I must award the headline of the day prize to the New York Times for A Monotonic Cyborg Learns to Say 'Pantsuit'.

Double arf!

:: Numeric Field Overflow ::

Today's header is the bane of my working life. Three days back in the office, and no time to post, because I seem to spend all my time patching up dodgy bits of databases...

Despite promises to update my blog from internet cafés in St Petersburg, I found time seriously lacking and was only able to check emails. There's obviously been a high-tech boom in the city in the past 3 years, as the places I went to were obvious, speedy and cheap (about 40p for 20 minutes). If I hadn't gone and lost my phone, then everything would have been fine and dandy. As it was, Daddy dearest availed me of his which enabled me to maintain SMS contact with people there. I've got a replacement phone on the same number, so it's just a case of trying to get those phone numbers back now...

St Petersburg lived up to all expectations. The city has been spruced up for the recent 300th Anniversary celebrations. Whilst trips to many of the tourist sights with the parents and Blondinka B were essential, I managed to see friends working at the St Petersburg Times as well as old Russian friends, Pasha, Tolya and Stas. As anticipated, I brought back large quantities of "contraband" and a rather fetching t-shirt depicting Yuri Gagarin (soon to make an appearance at bAsTaRd).

Essential places for art lovers to visit in St Petersburg are the Hermitage and the State Russian Museum. Whilst the former offers a world-class collection of paintings, sculpture and furniture from around the globe, the Russian Museum traces the history of Russian art from early icons to grand 19th century portaiture (Repin and the like) to the Russian Avant-Garde of the 20s and 30s. Artists such as Kandinsky and Malevich are well represented - these provided an interesting contrast with the later propgandist and soviet-realist pieces also on display. It is possible to see a satsfactory amount of this museum in a day, whereas I felt our two four-hour visits to the Hermitage barely did it justice. A disappointment of my parents' last visit was that they hadn't been able to visit any of the imperial palaces outside the city. To compensate this time they went to Peterhof (I was too hung over to join them (but went several times when I lived in St P 3 years ago). Later on in the week, we headed to Tsarskoe Tselo to the magnificent Catherine Palace.

Apart from the tourist sights, it's easy to see that much has changed in the city in the past three years. I was delighted by the increased availability of decent music - Pasha has opened a music shop in the suburbs which sells excellent dance music on Ninja Tune, Warp and other London labels. Although the touristy parts of the city are now worthy of any European metropolis, change in the backstreets is still painfully slow, and Russians are still reassuringly impolite and pushy on the metro. I found it surprising that relatively few restaurants had menus in any other language than Russian - meals could have been pot-luck for the olds without a resident translator! The number and variety of interesting bars has increased encouragingly. With Pasha and Tolik (and later with others) I went to the moderately priced but rather trendy "Imbir" bar (the name means "Ginger" - the spice, not the hair colour). Here Russians and foreign visitors from all backgrounds mixed in an arty, fairy-lit atmosphere. Despite costing more than other drinking holes, Imbir boasted a decent menu (my delicious Chinese-inspired soup cost about £3) and flasks of well-chilled vodka. as we toasted the last of our third flask, the three of us noted that things my have changed in "Piter", but that we haven't really. I didn't see Stas until my last night there, with Pasha, he had been one of the stalwarts of those heinous drinking sessions in our student days. He now works in the marketing department of a building company - and apparently has quite good prospects for promotion. We went to a new bar which could never have existed in St Petersburg 3 years ago. Called "Epoch", this place was a repository of Soviet kitsch of the highest order, topped with an imposing life-size portrait of Brezhnev. Russian humour may be as black as coal but it has taken a while for even them to swallow this. The Brezhnev days represented a complete clampdown after Khruschev's "thaw" in the sixties. Secret police were rife and corrution soared. This level of brazen irony in presentation represents for me a brave and necessary step for Russia as she develops in the post-Soviet era. By not closeting the skeletons of the past, new generations may not run the risk of repetition. We cannot see into the future, but in my heart I can only hope that this place I love will change (even more) for the better.

Doubtless I shall be returning to the topic of Russia in later posts, but now on to domestic news:

Those kitten-fetishists at b3ta have once more excelled themselves with the weekly challenge to design a poster for National Smoking Week. I heartily approve of this campaign from Mr Brainstuff:

Elsewhere I read of the sad news of Katharine Hepburn's death. In that linked article, Zadie Smith touchingly describes her idolisation of this grande dame of the silver screen.

The prize for most contrived and innuendo-laden headline of last week goes to ESPNSoccernet. They should be ashamed.

And finally... a photo which has something of the Gary Larson about it...