Most pedantic man of the year award goes to...

Photo from www.bbc.co.uk

Jeremy Clarkson!

He truly is the most pedantic person ever - As a lot of you will know, he announced not long ago in The Sun that even though the continuity announcer had said after their last episode in the current series, that Top Gear would be back in the summer - It won't be.

Thus sparking a whole load of controversy - Is Top Gear canceled? Is Jeremy Clarkson leaving? Is Clarkson just messing with us?

Answer - A little of the latter and quite a lot of secret option D - Top Gear is back in the summer but only as a one off special. The actual new series doesn't start until Autumn 2007.

I think Clarkson really enjoys pointing out these little mistakes...I feel a little sorry for the continuity announcer - He makes one tiny mistake and Jeremy pounces on it and makes a big national story of it.

Ah well, what else can we expect from Mr Clarkson really? Anyway - At least it means Top Gear's future and that of Clarkson, Hammond and May is fine and so all is good with the world...Except the longer we have to wait for each new series, the longer those on the ticket waiting list (me included) will have to wait to go to one of the recordings...

Political correctness takes the bacon

Photo from www.ardnamushrooms.co.uk

First of all; Apologies to the terrriblepun - If it even can be called that... And now on to the story. Okay, so I had BBC 5 Live on in the background the other night, when suddenly they mention Honley C of E Primary and Kirklees - Kirklees is the name of our local government and Honley is two villages over from me. I went to Honley High - Would have gone to the primary too but there was a clerical mixup and I lost my place...

Anyway, I instantly turn up the radio and turn up the sound wondering why on earth Honley C of E would be mentioned on a national radio station. Turns out the school is putting on a play for the parents. Okay, so nothing new there - It's a dramatizization of the story the Three Little Pigs....Again - Nothing strange there.

But the school had made the decision that the play the 'Three Little Pigs' would be insensitive to Muslims because they don't eat pigs, and of course in the story the wolf tries to, so instead of pigs it would be the... 'Three Little Puppies'...For heavens sake!

That has got to be one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard in my life! For a start Honley Primary is a Church of England school, meaning it's a Christian school - So technically there should be no Muslims there to be offended in the first place!

That said, my C of E in the next village over had about half a dozen Muslim students when I was there, as well as some Jewish and an odd Jehovah's witness - The school bent over backwards to not offend them and kind of forgot it was supposed to teach Christianity...We never even read from the Bible - Just some good morals and ethics book.

Anyway, the 'best' part of this story has got to be the fact that nobody even complained about it being called the Three Little Pigs, plus a man who phoned in because he was Muslim himself said that the idea anyone from his religion would be offended by the story was just not true.

5 Live then interviewed a member of Kirlees council who said the decision was all the school's own decision, and had nothing to do with them.

Actually no - the story's 'best' part is that about ten minutes after the interview with the 'man from Kirklees' a statement was issued that Honley wouldn't be changing the pigs to puppies after all. Probably because they got told off for being so idiotic.

I must admit when they first started talking about changing the pigs to puppies i couldn't think why they would do that - The only reason I came up with was that fat people were somehow offended - The Muslim/Kosher aspect didn't even enter in my mind at all.

I suppose now is when I should write a summing up paragraph about the state of education today and the problems/stupidity of excessive political correctness..But I think the story kind of speaks for itself...

YouTube is getting sued

Picture from www.youtube.com

You Tube and it's parent company Google are being sued with a £517 million lawsuit ($1 billion) by Viacom for copyright infringement of the clips available on You Tube for people to watch for free.

For those who don't know Viacom is the US media company that owns MTV and Comedy Central, and today they filed the law suit in New York, bringing the copyright argument between Viacom and Google to a head.

Viacom claims that they own the rights to over 160 thousand illegally uploaded clips on YouTube, and have being demanding for months that pirated clips are removed - Along with several other high profile companies such as Disney, Time Warner, and ABC.

I also read on Guardian.co.uk that Viacom released a statement attacking You Tube, saying it had; "built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google.''

I think that the whole thing is getting slightly out of hand now, I mean surely a line should be drawn on what is and isn't copyright infringement? Sure all those copyrighted music videos and tv show clips are uploaded, but in a lot of cases you can't actually buy them on dvd or people have being recommended a show and want to see what it's like first.

Also, with YouTube you are only viewing the clips, it's not designed as a watch and download site, so it's more like a large TV station with hundreds of chanels you can choose to watch than anything. If all these clips keep being removed I think it will it just mean less advertising for the companies in general and a huge increase on illegal downloads.

Plus I don't see a lot of these companies creating YouTube accounts and putting the clips up themselves - Sure CBS has an account and uploads things, but not like whole episodes or movies, etc... Of things that won't be released to DVD or haven't yet.

Anyway, I don't believe that YouTube 'exploits the devotion of fans', I think it's up to the people who own the copyright to help make their material accessable in the first place, so if it exploits anything, it's the weakness of the companies to supply for the demand in the changing technological world, etc... But that's just my opinion.


To read the full story go to Times Online or Guardian.co.uk.

Stories I missed reporting on part 1...

Photo from www.celebrity-gossip.net (edit by me)

On Friday 23rd of February in Amsterdam at Hugh Grant's Dutch premire of Music & Lyrics - Where a woman jumped out from the crowd and handcuffed herself to him, where she stayed for ten minutes till she was cut free by firemen and hauled off to the local police station.

The woman - Cielke Sijben, a Dutch journalist wasn't a mad stalker fan or anything. She did it as part of a stunt organised by her and her crew from Dutch network 101 tv. They wanted to see if Cielke could walk down the red carpet with Hugh, so decided handcuffs were the way to go, because if she just dashed over and took his arm, body guards would easly haul her away.

Cielke didn't actually think they could do it (otherwise she would have dressed up for the occasion) but thought she'd try anyway, so was suprised how easy it was to reach Hugh and slap on the cuffs.

She introduced herself and explained, etc... So as to not worry Hugh too much, and when she was cut free she was taken off to the police station, but wasn't actually charged.

I got most of the story from Cielke herself from when she appeared on BBC radio station 5 Live to talk about it, though additional information came from starpulse.

I don't think doing what she did makes her a maniac as such (who wouldn't want to walk down the red carpet with a celebrity?) and if she had asked they probably would have said no - even for a publicity stunt, afterall celebrities and journalists in general don't have that great a relationship.

No, in my opinion the only thing that posibly be a bit mad is that she chose Hugh Grant - No offence to him of course, it's just I can think of a few celebrities I'd much rather handuff myself to on the red carpet, (not that that is really my style of course though) and no, I'm not going to give examples...

What did you find in your inbox this morning?

Okay, so I didn't quite keep my promise from Tuesday, or post the review of life on mars, but I don't think any one's really reading them - If I get a couple of requests I will, otherwise I'll leave it.

So, onto today. I opened up an inbox to find a forwarded email from one of my friends, I don't usually read them because, well - They are almost always those damn chain mail things like send this to 10 people in the next five minutes or you will have a cursed love life, or will get visited at midnight by the dead girl in the closet with a knife, etc...

Anyway, I was bored, so I opened it - And I was pleasantly surprised, and it made me giggle - So I've decided to copy and paste it for you guys to read too:

THEY WALK AMONG US

Some guy bought a new fridge for his house. To get rid of his old fridge, he put it in his front yard and hung a sign on it saying: "Free to good home. You want it, you take it." For three days the fridge sat there without even one person looking twice at it. He eventually decided that people were too un-trusting of this deal. It looked too good to be true, so he changed the sign to read: "Fridge for sale $50." The next day someone stole it.

One day I was walking down the beach with some friends when someone shouted...."Look at that dead bird!" Someone looked up at the sky and said... "where???"

While looking at a house, my brother asked the real estate agent which direction was north because, he explained, he didn't want the sun waking him up every morning. She asked, "Does the sun rise in the north?" When my brother explained that the sun rises in the east, and has for sometime, she shook her head and said, "Oh, I don't keep up with that stuff."

I used to work in technical support for a 24/7 call center. One day I got a call from an individual who asked what hours the call center was open. I told him, "The number you dialed is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week." He responded, "Is that Eastern or Pacific time?" Wanting to end the call quickly, I said, "Uh, Pacific".

My colleague and I were eating our lunch in our cafeteria, when we overheard one of the administrative assistants talking about the sunburn she got on her weekend drive to the shore. She drove down in a convertible, but, "didn't think she'd get sunburned because the car was moving."

My sister has a lifesaving tool in her car it's designed to cut through a seat belt if she gets trapped. She keeps it in the trunk...

My friends and I were on a beer run and noticed that the cases were discounted 10%. Since it was a big party, we bought 2 cases. The cashier multiplied 2 times 10% and gave us a 20% di scount.... (maybe I should have bought 10 cases)

I couldn't find my luggage at the airport baggage area. So I went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that my bags never showed up. She smiled and told me not to worry because she was a trained professional and I was in good hands. "Now," she asked me, "has your plane arrived yet?"...

While working at a pizza parlor I observed a man ordering a small pizza to go. He appeared to be alone and the cook asked him if he would like it cut into 4 pieces or 6. He thought about it for some time before responding. "Just cut it into 4 pieces; I don't think I'm hungry enough to eat 6 pieces."

Yep, they walk among us
AND they reproduce!

Not dead yet!

Hey everyone, I'm still alive and interested in my blog, though wow it's been a long time since i've posted! I apologise for that, (almost two weeks to be exact) and I've missed commenting on a few stories I've come across in the meantime which I'm annoyed about, so will have a recent newstory round up of the best ones tomorrow.

But I do have a relativly good excuse for not posting for so long - That thing some people know as 'real life'.

From Thursday 22nd of February to Sunday my little cousin (12) was staying over, and with him being here, and sleeping on the floor of my room, it was impossible to be able to concentrate long enough to post once - let alone every day, due to the fact he seems to have the mental age of about 6, so he wouldn't leave me alone, and kept closing my programs, stealing the mouse, pulling on the keyboard, writing gibberish, jumping on me, turning off my computer from the power button, etc... And he refused to treat me as an authoritive figure/adult because I'm 17 - so in his mind just a kid, so telling him off/hitting him round the head/banning him from watching a dvd/me reading to him/whatever else he wanted, etc... but that would do either nothing to stop him misbehaving, or make him go into a full blown tantrum.


The reason I'm explaining this is because it has hit on an (I think) interesting subject. I say this because I know several children, (mostly boys) around the 11-13 pre-teen age who act as if they are half the age they are - & the one common factor between all of them is the fact their parents had them late in life. Which makes me wonder if it's not just coincidence, but more a behavioural and mental pattern due to how a lot of parents in their early to mid (and in some case even late) 40's raise their children and how the chirldren in turn react to their parents when they become more aware of things like the fact their parents are much older than their friend's parents, etc...
But I'll save that article/discussion/debate, call it what you will for later in the week.

Anyway, on Sunday night my useless immune system got hit by a virus, so considering the fact I was ill to begin with, getting a fever, throwing up, hallucinating (pretty whacked out ones too), sneezing and coughing, (also setting off my tonsillitus) wasn't the best thing to happen...But got rid of that now, except for my cough which has stuck around with the tonsillitus.

And finally, the past couple of days didn't have time to post as I was busy planning a week trip to Cleveland, Ohio in America with one of my best friends in July. Yes - Not one of the most obvious tourist spots in the states, but one of my other friends is moving out there on March 12th, so it's a chance to see her, and there's a gig we want to see in Lakeside on while we're there. Reason for telling you that is because i'll be doing a diary on the trip when it happens, and also a few articles in relation to planning it. (Not least a few rants on certain policies in some/all of the American states.. And then there's the little matter of 'Amendment 2', but not going to go into that now...)

Okay, so that's pretty much me up to date, thank you all my readers, and especially those who leave comments, and sorry for not replying to some of the comments left on or after the 21st of Frb that I wasn't able to reply to, and i'll try and catch up on all your blogs within the next couple of days.