Dadblog

My company MessyMedia has launched its latest title: Glitterditch. See the launch post here, or visit the site and check it out.

Those kerrazy Italian politicos are at it again, this time recommending that immigrants be treated by Italians in the same way Italians were treated by the SS - by punishing ten of them for every one Italian got at by dirty aliens:

Mr Bettio was roundly condemned by politicians and normally supportive newspapers. He said that he was “agitated and mad” when he made the remarks because an Asian immigrant had threatened his mother.

Are you looking at my momma? Are you looking at my momma?

If there are any ladies out there, and they’d like an insight into the male mind, they could do worse than check out the responses to my post on the Word Magazine site about iTunes ratings. Hey, at least we’re not starting wars or anything….

214 - The Blonde Map of Europe « strange maps:

Wise thought for the day from currybetdotnet:

It used to be so easy to be a Depeche Mode completist.

Amen, brother. Amen.

Norm Geras doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to books he’s not enjoying - normblog: Reading for pain?:

I have laboured through books from which I got no enjoyment, but that was only because I was engaged in some work or other for which I thought knowledge of the books in question was necessary. But when reading freely, reading fiction and/or for pleasure? Forget it. I have once or twice persisted with a novel rather longer than I now feel was sensible. Mostly, though, if the book isn’t doing anything for me I’ll dump it. There’s too much I want to read and haven’t yet, to carry on against the evidence.

I can’t do this. I just can’t. If I dump a book, it sits on the shelf with a displeased, mocking expression: “so, I’m too hard for you, am I? Pussy“. I have to wrestle the fucker to the floor - even when I’ve given up a book, I always come back to it, after a suitable break for training, just like Rocky came back to Apollo Creed. Are you listening, Stephenson? Thought The Baroque Trilogy would defeat me? Thought it was the end when I collapsed halfway through Quicksilver? No fucking way. You didn’t beat me. I beat you.

That said, I have to admit Gravity’s Rainbow is a real contender. Pynchon has almost beaten me to the floor. But I will prevail. No random over-educated stream-of-consciousness American shit is getting past this Welsh boy. Just ask Wallace. He knows.

I think I succeeded in buying Bruce Springsteen tickets this morning. But it was half-an-hour before they were supposed to go on sale, and I’m just discovering a deep uncertainty about any online transaction. I mean, they gave me a reference number, but there was no person speaking to reassure me. Plus, it’s at the Emirates, which also makes me feel guilty and disloyal.

Thus, another moment which should be joyous has its life sucked out by modern technology and tribalism. Oh well. This picture cheered me up.

Information chief calls for review of ID card plans | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics:

The government needs to review the scale of its plans for identity cards in the wake of the release of 25 million names and addresses on government child benefit records, the information commissioner, Richard Thomas, told the justice select committee yesterday.

Keep plugging away. FWIW, I’ve met the terms of my Pledge and have given 10 quid to Phil Booth who’s planning to refuse an ID card and fight it in the courts if it comes to that.

I genuinely think that, if this policy isn’t reviewed, I’ll not be voting Labour at the next election. Which will mean ending my Labour membership. Which would be sad.

Rock could be nationalised by February - Telegraph. Cripes. Will this mean an even longer wait to buy Led Zeppelin tickets?

Last week I got the chance to go to Moscow for the first time, courtesy of my old colleague Ben Wegg-Prosser and his new firm, Sup (you can read some businessy stuff about the trip if you want). I was only there for two nights and three days, but managed to cram quite a few things in. Generally, it was nothing like I’d imagined. It was bigger, more beautiful, more sophisticated and more charming than I expected, and (as I’ve been saying to most people since I came back) the thing that strikes men of a certain age is just how very beautiful Russian women are.

To be honest, this was something of a surprise - I still remember the Spitting Image sketch which described all Russian women as looking like Chernenko. But even the women at immigration were beautiful - I had expected to find Russian immigration scary, not mildly exciting. And from then on, everywhere you looked there were beautiful women. A Russian blogger I met put this down to genetics - there have, he said, always been two or three percentage points more women than men in Russia, because “Russian men die young” (the current life expectancy is, astonishingly, just 54 for men), so the evolutionary pressure on, ahem, non-attractive females is greater than in western Europe.

Whatever the reason, it’s a fact. I saw a great many beautiful things - the Moscow Metro, the art in the Pushkin gallery, the icons in the Tretyakov, the view from a rooftop bar in a weird new office environment being constructed by the river - but I’m afraid the image that sticks is attractive women in long coats walking through the snow.

Hence the picture. At least she’s English….