There’s a song on Neil Diamond’s new LP, 12 Songs, that I’m quite fond of. When I first heard it I thought it would be an ideal candidate for putting on one of the tapes I make for my grrls to listen to on long car jouneys. It’s a jolly, cheerful, soppy Sesame Street kind of song all about the nature of love.
Love is all about chemistry
Isn’t something you go off to school to learn
It isn’t math or ancient history
It’s the kind of thing that comes down to simple terms
It’s not about you
It’s not about me
Love is all about WE
Yes, it’s all about we
But I was forgetting the simple fact that there’s only one word in those lyrics that has any significance for children. Wee. One of the evil collection of elite words that will cause instant, tireless mirth in any child. Wee, Poo, Fart. They’re all solid gold, magic words as guaranteed to make children collapse with laughter as the sight of a man falling on his bum. There’s another one. So Neil Diamond must have never played this song in the presence of any child. If he had, he’d have heard this.
What’s so amazing is that Nintendo have gone and made the very same mistake. They’ve called their new gaming console “Wii”, pronounced “Wee”. It’s amazing. Has nobody who works for Nintendo ever spent any time with children? Or maybe their kids are so ernest that they wouldn’t find it funny. However, the connection with bodily functions is stronger that it first seems. Maybe the whole thing is intentional.
The novel one-handed device contains motion sensors that allow players to control the action onscreen by pointing it at their television and waving it around.
Heh heh.
I was thinking just the same thing yesterday when I saw two youths, each with a puppy. They weren’t treating their little pets very well. At one point a puppy strayed into the road and its owner literally kicked it up into the air and onto the pavement.
It’s a tricky thing. The police are making it harder for people to carry knives on the streets so you can see how those people who would have carried a knife would look around for an alternative to make themselves feel safe. A scary dog can be wielded with pride whereas you have to hide a knife away. There’s another advantage for the ne’er-do-well in that taking a dog for a walk is an extremely good excuse for being in any neighbourhood at any time of the day.
There are, however, some terrible flaws in the dog as weapon plan. The first is that you can’t easily get rid of a dog once you’ve used it in a crime. Not only does it leave genetic material all over the place, on you, in your house, everywhere else, but it is also inclined to find you and follow you home if you throw it into the Thames, something a knife seldom does. People are also likely to become sentimentally attached to their dog, even if it does start incriminating them. And even if they do decide to do away with their former pet, it’s not easy. Look what happened with Bill Sikes’ dog, Bull’s-eye.
BBC NEWS | England | London | Dogs are yobs’ ‘weapon of choice’
PayPal to launch mobile payments service in the UK - News Analysis - Mobile Europe: “Using PayPal Mobile’s ‘Text to Buy’ service, consumers will be able to make instant purchases, such as CDs, DVDs, shoes and clothes, by sending product codes via text message. Items will then be delivered to home addresses already saved in the buyers’ PayPal accounts. Merchants who have signed up to PayPal’s new mobile service will be able to open new direct sales channels to buyers, while consumers will be able to see an advertisement - in a magazine, or on TV for example - and purchase products immediately. PayPal Mobile will also enable users to donate money to charities, instantly.”
Am I still dreaming or isn’t this going to be really popular? You see a poster for a CD, you just buy it straight away. If it catches on, advertising in stations and bus stops is going to get very expensive.
Artworks spark security alert near London Tube - Britain - Times Online: “Four of the suspect objects were given the all clear by 9.20am, but a source said the fifth was mistakenly picked up by dustmen and police had to track the lorry down before putting a cordon round it and checking that the ‘bomb’ was safe. Scotland Yard was keen to assure the community there was no security concern.”
Pinch me, I’m dreaming.
The Biblical story on which the Jewish festival of Passover is based says that Moses told Pharaoh Ramses II, the Egyptian leader, that he must free his Jewish slaves or his country would suffer terrible punishments. When the Pharaoh refused, Egypt was afflicted with 10 terrible plagues the last one of which was the killing of every first-born child and beast in Egypt. The Jews avoided having their own first-borns killed by marking their houses with lambs blood and so God ‘passed over’ their houses and didn’t murder their children.
I expect you can see where I’m going with this. Wasn’t Moses the Osama Bin Laden of his time, but even worse because Egypt wasn’t a democracy? The people who’s children were murdered had no role in choosing their leader and no say in his policies. They really were the ultimate innocent victims. Of course it’s great that the Jews were freed from slavery in Egypt, but look at the price! Maybe I’m over-sensitive because I am a first-born child and so is my oldest daughter. The Jews could have told their Egyptian neighbours what they needed to do in order to avoid having their first-born children killed. If they had done that it really would have merited an annual celebration. As it is I think the events are more worthy of a sad memorial, like a smaller version of Holocaust Memorial Day.
I was talking to my Dad about this and he asked me how else the Children of Israel could have free themselves from slavery. It’s a question some Palestinians have clearly been asking themselves.
The children of food Puritans like me are usually only allowed to eat sweets and chocolate on special occasions, and even then only in moderation. So today when we gave our daughters colossal chocolate eggs with the inevitable accompanying gigantic bars of Dairy Milk they may have been slightly unsure about what was going on. Once they’d started eating the chocolate though and nobody had told them to stop it was as if the walls of society had come crashing down. They responded in a way I never would have foreseen; they took all their clothes off. Then they ran round and round the garden shouting and waggling their bottoms. I was relieved that the bacchanalian orgy pretty much stopped there, probably because they are too young to be able to think of any other uninhibited things to do. Actually, Amelia did do a wee in a toy wheelbarrow but they’re too little to tie their parents up and barbecue us. I still haven’t found a reasonable way of reconciling this clearly pagan Easter with the other Easter I’d like them to know about, the Christian one with suffering, resurrection and hope. I tried to bring the subject up but I might as well have been talking about the relative merits of nicely indented html versus optimised text with no carriage returns or formatting. I favour the former, by the way, if you’re interested.
Remember the Beatles? They were famous a long time ago and they started a record company called Apple Records. The record label also signed a handful of other artists, including John Tavener, Ravi Shankar and James Taylor. In other words, it’s not a well-known record label. Now they’re trying to sue Apple Computer, I bet you’ve heard of them, because they claim that the iTunes music store infringes their trademark, a nice juicy green apple. The record company is run by former Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison. They obviously don’t have a clue about the modern world at all. Instead of suing their world-class rival they would have done better to open up a rival online music store called Apple Tunes or something. They might then have had a chance of actually selling some of the music that they’re so precious about.
WALRUSGUMBOOT: Apple Computer Slams Apple Corps
Well the Guardian got me proper with their April fool. I was half way through the third paragraph of the story, my blood boiling, before I noticed that something wasn’t quite right.
It was Mr Cameron’s idea to release the single - a new version of the hit song Talk, retitled Talk to David - exclusively via podcast. In an effort to reach the Conservatives’ new target demographic, he has agreed to grant exclusive distribution rights to the Guardian, and the song can be downloaded today from guardian.co.uk/podcasts.
Yeah that’s right, I thought, they are the new target demographic… hang on, no they’re not! Hats off to the Guardian.
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